






























































































OUJ-F of MEXICO 


J * 


N//J Howl — 
































SOUTH 

TO 

PADRE 


\ 












Piled in a mass of luscious color were soft 
peach-skinned mangoes, big green water¬ 
melons, striped gourds, clumps of yellow 
bananas, baskets of purple plums, new po¬ 
tatoes, tropical pineapples, crates of oranges, 
red tomatoes and green vegetables. 



















SOUTH 

TO 

PADRE 

By 

DOROTHY CHILDS HOGNER 


Illustrated by 
NILS HOGNER 

> 

) 

> ) * 


LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD COMPANY 
Boston 1936 New York 




Fm 

.Grt 


Copyright, 1936, by 


LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPARD COMPANY 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be re¬ 
produced in any form without permission in writing 
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes 
to quote brief passages in connection with a review 
written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper. 


Published May, 1936 


w • « 


* • 
C 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



. t 


k 




CONTENTS 


Part i. Heading South 


VAQB 

First Night . 13 

On the Road . 22 

Part 2. Louisiana 

Vieux Carre . 33 

Father of Waters . 46 

Bayous and Canals . 52 

Fields of Sugar Cane and Rice . 66 

Part 3. Texas—the Lone Star 

The Lone Star . *73 

Mosquitoes . 80 

Galveston . 86 

To Corpus . 97 

The Islands . 105 

Early Inhabitants . 116 

Surf Fishing . 120 

Sand Crabs . 124 

Seining . 132 

The Fort . 136 

Tarpon .138 


7 












Part 4. Across the Border 


PAGE 

Shrimps . 143 

Cannery . 147 

Golden Valley . 150 

Border Towns . 155 

Road into Mexico . 161 

Road to Monterrey . 166 

On the Edge of the Tropics . 181 

To Market . 188 

Mexican Portrait . 197 

Cockfight . 205 

The Opera Comes to Town . 220 

Bullfight . 211 

Homeward Bound . 224 


8 















Part One 


HEADING SOUTH 






















































































































































The city of New Yor\ behind us, we were crossing the im¬ 
mense span of George Washington bridge, bridge to a 
million destinations, gateway to the continent. We were 
heading south in America where the breath of exploration 
and settlement is still in the wind. Great, golden continent, 
rich, rugged, young—strong with the spirit of youth; pioneer 
days lying close like a shadow behind the advance of modern 
man with tractor, derrick, mill, dredge, factory; the machine 
coming where many peoples, English, Trench, Spanish, 
Dutch, have broken the soil of new country. Continent of 
great industries, cotton fields, sugar and rice plantations, fish¬ 
eries, golden citrus fruit orchards, cattle ranches, oil re¬ 
fineries; land of sand beaches, mountains, jungle swamps, 
deserts, plains, winds, storms, rain, and sunshine. 

We were to cross historic rivers, bayous, canals, the Mis¬ 
sissippi river, the bayou Teche, the intracoastal canal. We 
were to live by the Gulf of Mexico, to cross over the border 
of the United States and glimpse a people of another race, 
the neighbor Mexicans. The whole country was before us, 
ours, everything under the sun. Day after day, sun, wind, 
and darkness; rain, sand beaches, sun, and sand. 


FIRST NIGHT 


L IGHTLY packed, we started south to Padre Island 
in an old Ford roadster. Our cook pans were in an 
iron box on the trunk rack, the tent strapped on top 
of that, the rest of our equipment in the back compartment 
of the car. 

Now Padre Island is perhaps one of the least known 
parts of our country. It lies way down in one corner of the 
United States, about as far south as you can get. It is oppo¬ 
site much exploited Florida, with the Gulf of Mexico be¬ 
tween, and at first glance seems to dispute the question 
of southernmost point. However, the keys of Florida are 
quite a bit further south. And, whereas the islands off the 
coast of Florida are a tourist paradise, old Padre is left 
severely alone, a desert island without a single town to boast 
of, scarcely an inhabitant. We discovered it by chance one 
day while studying a map of the United States. Surprisingly, 
it is a part of Texas. Surprisingly, because in our minds, 
we had always catalogued Texas as a state of plains, big 
ranches, cow punchers, long-horned cattle, wild west sagas. 
We had read of cowboy, vigilante, and ranger. But their 
adventures were identified with great plains, not with islands. 
Yet the map showed clearly that the coast of Texas was lined 
with a fringe of islands, long slim pieces of land curving 


13 


downward toward old Mexico. And from the location we 
had every right to believe that they would have sand beaches 
like those in Florida. We were surprised that there were 
no towns marked on Padre which was over one hundred 
miles long, no towns and only one, half apologetic road 
that threaded its way from end to end, marked “Impassable 
in the rainy season. Make local enquiry.” North of Padre 
lay a somewhat shorter island, with a cowboy flavored 
name, Mustang. It was somewhat more inhabited. The 
words Port Aransas were printed over the face of the upper 
tip end of Mustang, pointing out a small dot of a town. A 
checkered line designated a ferry running between the 
mainland at Corpus Christi and Padre, names of the ends 
of the earth to us. We might just as well have been going 
to China for all we knew about the country, but the fact 
that there was a ferry connection indicated that people went 
to the island for some reason. In our old Ford we set 
forth to find out why. 

It has often been said that the success of a camping trip 
depends upon what you don’t take, and we prepared with 
this adage in mind. Our outfit was also limited by our 
purse. To be exact we had $300.00, a twenty-nine model 
Ford roadster with a reconditioned engine, and a few relics 
of past camping trips: an axe, a short-handled shovel, a 
candle lantern, a flashlight, army blankets, and a camera. 
Not quite sufficient. We needed something for a roof against 
the rain, something to cook with, something to sleep on in 
the snake country. Now, as it is almost two thousand miles 
from New York City to Padre, by way of New Orleans, we 
did not spend much of our money on the outfit. We saved 
it for running expenses, and bought only practical, heavy 


14 


duty, camp necessities. At the headquarters of the army and 
navy stores in New York City we found what we wanted, 
cheap. The store was large, with high counters and shelves 
displaying all sorts of gadgets, aluminum kettles miracu¬ 
lously fitting one into the other, devices for keeping matches 
dry, high boots with knife pockets, big electric lanterns, silk 
tents, ice boxes. Perhaps it was well that we had a limited 
amount of money to spend. 

Our first purchase was a seven by seven wall tent, good 
old army style, clumsier than its silk relation, less durable, 
but the price was the thing—on sale for $10.00. Another 
special was a two burner gasoline KampKook stove at 
$3.95, to be fueled from the car tank. We added a couple 
of folding cots, a couple of pairs of blue jeans, a couple 
of khaki shirts for each of us, and, most important of all, 
a heavy mesh mosquito net. Our cooking outfit was Wool- 
worth’s best: two cook pans, a small coffee pot, two alumi¬ 
num plates, two enamel cups, two each of knives, forks 
and spoons, the all important frying pan, one wash basin, 
one galvanized pail, and one large, screw top oil can with 
a capped spout, for a water container. This was the outfit 
complete, except for paint and canvas and typewriter, and 
one bit of extra luggage buried deep in the bottom of the 
car and rarely disturbed, a suitcase with “good” clothes 
for emergencies. On the trip we dressed in washed but un¬ 
ironed khaki shirts, old sweaters, blue jeans and corduroy 
skirt. After the first week we discarded stockings and 
socks, clothing our feet in sandals and sneakers. 

Thus lightly dressed, lightly packed, we were on our way. 
We were driving in a general southwesterly direction, turn¬ 
ing from highway 22 onto the great arterial highway n, 

15 


heading for the Shenandoah valley, thence to New Orleans, 
to strike a coast route into Texas. The time was late May. 
Our northern friends had suggested that we go to some 
nice place like Nova Scotia. They had warned us against 
going far south in the summer months. They spoke of 
typhoid, amoebic dysentery, strange tropical worms, floods 
and hurricanes, Mexican bandits (these in particular), and 
heat stroke. The list is by no means complete. 

One health precaution we had to take. We got scratched 
for smallpox. The United States government will not let 
anyone come back out of Mexico without a vaccination 
certificate, if there happens to be an epidemic of small¬ 
pox south of the border. Boiled water would take care of 
typhoid germs. We were prepared to dose with quinine 
if the mosquitoes had plumed feelers and sat down close 
on our skin when they stung. The rest would take care of 
itself. We were off for a desert island. The future bandits 
and hurricanes did not bother our heads. 

But on the first night we had more immediate, if less dan¬ 
gerous troubles. We started from New York rather late. 
Before dark we had passed through the industrial centers 
of Pennsylvania. The black, smoky towns with the nar¬ 
row, thirsty looking streets and the drab, grey houses were 
behind us. We were in the country land of Pennsylvania, 
rolling and pleasant land, all beautifully marked out into 
a patchwork of farms with clean, neat houses, and great 
barns built in quaint style, the first stories of cement and 
the upper stories of wood, usually painted red and con¬ 
structed to project and overhang the first floor and form 
a shelter for stock. The buildings were not of the old 
grey, fallen-in kind that tramps like to sneak into for a 

16 



'y 




«U/ 


Before dar\ we had passed through the in¬ 
dustrial centers of Pennsylvania. The blac\, 
smoky towns with the narrow, thirsty look¬ 
ing streets were behind us. 

































I 


night’s lodging. They were big and formal, often decorated 
with fancy designs, stars, false doors in white, pictures of 
fat horses, cows and pigs, such animals as stood in the 
fields. Part of the land was given over to paddocks, part 
was patterned with rye and alfalfa, or new ploughed earth. 
It was in use, every acre of it, fenced with tight wire, and 
there just wasn’t any place to pitch a seven by seven wall 
tent. 

Night came. We were still driving, weary, driving on¬ 
ward over the great highway, having a new appreciation 
about the West being God’s own country and all that sort 
of thing. Days after this, when we finally reached Texas, 
we asked a policeman where we could camp. He laughed. 

“Everything’s wide open, here,” he said. “Put up your 
tent anywheres outside of town.” 

But space was no longer wide open in Pennsylvania. If 
we had considered the matter beforehand, we could have 
planned. As it was, we decided to make time until we 
reached Louisiana, sleep higgledy-piggledy just anywhere 
on the way.* The immediate solution to our problem lay 
in gas stations. Thus, when we came upon a filling station, 
set in among the big fields and the big red barns on a rolling 
hill, we broached the subject to the owner of the place, a 
genial little Pennsylvania Dutchman. 

“Why, camp right here,” he said. “I’ve got a nice picnic 
grove.” He led us out to a place beside the great highway 
where small plank tables were set up beneath young shade 
trees. 

“How much will it cost?” we asked. 

* Complete information about camping facilities in the states, and a map 
of state and national parks, may be had, upon request, from the National 
Park Service, Department of the Interior, Washington, D. C. 

19 


“Oh, that’s all right. No charge at all.” 

He was much interested in our outfit. He looked at it 
with envy. 

“Some day the wife and me want to go travellin’,” he said 
as he inspected the camp stove, the new folding cots, the 
shovel, axe, and water can. 

Americans are a restless people. At gas stations, country 
stores, eating counters, always the owners envied the travel¬ 
lers. They too wished to be out on the road. 

“My, you’re a long ways from home,” they’d say. “It must 
be fun travellin’ like you!’ Then would come the questions 
about New York, how hot was it there in summer, did the 
people in the city really die in great numbers of the heat 
like it said in the papers? 

On the first night it took us some time to get the tent 
up. It was dark and we weren’t familiar with the layout. 
We made camp under the headlights of the car. Leaving 
our cook stove to be christened another day, we asked the 
wife of the little Dutchman for hamburgers and two cups 
of coffee, the great American lunch that tastes so good out 
on the road. While the hamburgers fried, we had our tank 
filled up with gas to give the owner some trade in return 
for his kindness. At last, in our tent, rolled up in our army 
blankets with trousers and shirts for pillows, we weren’t 
long in getting to sleep, in spite of the noise of the night 
drivers, the trucks which forged steadily past the picnic 
grove. The main highways of America never sleep. There 
is an amazing amount of life trundling over them all twenty- 
four hours. Ever so often we would wake up and see the 
lights of big trucks swaying up over the hills with huge, 
cavernous-bodied trailers, great transportation units hurry- 


20 


ing the produce of America to market, one man at the 
wheel of each truck, another asleep in a compartment over 
the front seat, the two taking turns, driving, driving hour 
after hour, stopping only now and again at some all night 
lunch wagon for a cup of coffee or a stein of beer. 

At cool of dawn we woke and got up. From then on 
we went to bed at dark and got up at sunrise. That was 
our rising and retiring schedule for our two months’ trip. 


21 


ON THE ROAD 


I N the morning we drove on through the farming coun¬ 
try of Pennsylvania. At high noon we lunched at 
an all-service station, where Americans-on-tour fill 
their stomachs and the tanks of their touring machines, a 
combination of restaurant and gas pumps. This place was 
a diner with a spirit of its own. A fat man stood at the 
gas pumps, a fat woman cooked the lunches. We sat at a 
small, drug store table, and had plenty of time to look 
about while the hot dogs sizzled. The walls of the place 
were plastered with religious sayings and pictures of Jesus. 
Placards called upon us—“Repent of your sins.” “Jesus 
is coming.” “The bridegroom is coming.” Ever so often 
in America we were reminded of Jesus, in unexpected places, 
such as the walls of this restaurant, or on the rocks of high 
mountains. And the warnings were ominous for those who 
were not repentant. 

After leaving Pennsylvania we passed through a succession 
of big southern states. We followed national highway n 
all the way to New Orleans. It is a good road, smooth and 
fast. We did not stop to do sight-seeing on the way. We 
decided, then and there, that America was all too big to 
see in one trip. As the mileage clicked off on the speedom¬ 
eter, the immensity of the nation swept in upon our con- 


22 



sciousness, and we knew that if we wanted to have our 
vacation on the Gulf of Mexico, we would have to set the 
rest of the South behind us, “omit” such phenomena as 
the great caverns and the natural bridge of Virginia, and 
take a fleeting panoramic view of the countryside from 
the highway. After passing over the Maryland and West 
Virginia farmlands, we slept one night in Virginia. The 
next night we were in Tennessee, and so on until we 
reached the gulf, and our real trip was begun. The rest 
was just “getting there,” an immense amount of shifting 
scenery in a short period of time. Certain impressions re¬ 
mained with us as if we had seen a set of views in a stere- 
opticon machine. 

Such is our memory of auto touring, except that there 
is a freshness of impression and a feeling of human con¬ 
tact that can never be obtained from pictures, a fullness of 
contour, and a memory of more than a visual sense, a 
succession of odors and sounds. The further south we got, 
the more were the nights filled with a swarm of unseen 
life. The swamps and lowlands resounded with a buzzing 
and humming of insect and amphibian and reptile. The 
foliage got taller, thicker, wider, more succulent; the fruits 
bigger, some nearing ripeness; and the air softer and warmer 
and more hazy. Even in the morning there was no sense 
of sharpness as in the northern air. 

Our camping on the trip down was not done in the shade 
of virginal forests. Instead, each night just as on the first, 
our tent rose beside the glamorous red and multicolored 
pumps that supplied the fuel for all the moving machines 
that make the land of America one great crawling continent, 
as if it were inhabited by some lively and fast-moving beetles 


23 


migrating hither and thither with no sense of direction, 
and no apparent community of interest. Besides the com¬ 
mercial traffic there were the thousands of touring cars 
which ranged in style from model T Fords to streamlined 
automobiles that flowed smoothly and passed us by, dis¬ 
appearing with incredible speed into the distance. As we 
slept in the shade of the gas pumps we wondered when 
America had had time to grow. 

Ninety years ago Americans were speaking of transcon¬ 
tinental “trails,” the Oregon Trail, the trail to Santa Fe. 
The population moved about with domestic animals to pull 
them in covered wagons and stagecoaches. Then, in a 
short succession of years, a succession of buggies and surries. 
Now the whole continent was netted with cement and as¬ 
phalt roads, and the air above was beginning to hum with 
flying machines. Nearly every city of more than ten thou¬ 
sand population, has set aside a landing field. As we passed 
in our small car we saw the big powerful-winged air trans¬ 
ports with tri-motors, carrying mail and passengers, and little 
flimsy private planes, as fragile looking as paper, small¬ 
winged, going up into the air as jaunty as dragon-flies 
buzzing over a pond on a summer day. When did America 
ever build for herself this immense system of transportation ? 

After leaving Maryland and West Virginia, we drove past 
the fine stables and paddocks of Virginia, past fields sprout¬ 
ing corn and wheat and grain-tipped rye, past apple or¬ 
chards and peach orchards with newly swelling green 
fruit, round and hard, and promising a good crop. At night¬ 
fall in the Shenandoah valley we came upon a big gas 
station glittering like a ship at sea with lights shining 

24 


through the valley darkness. The owner was as genial as 
the Dutchman in Pennsylvania. 

“Sure. Camp as long as you like,” he invited. We put up 
our tent in his field, and tried out our cook stove—boiled 
coffee and potatoes to eat with canned sardines. The stove 
worked to perfection, burned with a hot flame on the fuel 
from our Ford—gasoline syphoned off with a piece of rub¬ 
ber hose. We were now running our car on non-high-test 
gas, the ordinary gas that contains no lead and is safe to 
use in stoves. 

The night was cool and dewy. We slept well with the 
Blue Ridge mountains lying soft and hazy in the distance. 
The next day we went through the town of Pulaski, and 
climbed directly up over a high mountain and down again, 
and shortly we were in Tennessee. Then we could see 
the Great Smoky mountains. They were big and rich look¬ 
ing, as are all the mountains of the Appalachian highland, 
the Blue Ridge, the Smokies, the Alleghenies, the Cumber- 
lands. They are mostly green-clad, with rounded slopes and 
soft curving valleys. Although worn down by thousands 
of years of erosion, they still look young and fresh because 
of the greenness on their sides. According to geologic 
reckoning they are ancient, older than the Rockies of the 
west which look so time-scarred and rugged. 

The blue haze of summer is beautiful. In the valleys the 
days are hot, but the nights are soft and cool. It is com¬ 
fortable driving down the Appalachian highland in late 
May. 

We were now confident that we would find camp grounds 
without trouble. We waited until night was almost upon 


25' 


us before we stopped at a country gas station. It was a nice 
looking place with tourist cabins set to one side of a large 
empty field. The owner regarded us for a moment, and 
then replied bruskly to our request about putting up our 
tent in the meadow, “I don’t suppose you could!” 

At first we did not understand whether he meant “no,” 
or was just thinking it over, but when he repeated, “I 
don’t suppose you could,” we decided that he meant no. 
We drove on and approached a neat little place with lots 
of land about it. This time we did not feel so confident. 
We were conscious of our attire. I guess we looked like 
bums. We had had nothing to wash in but a tin basin. 
We sort of shrivelled up when the woman proprietor looked 
at us. She said, “I don’t suppose you could!” 

Now it began to look as though we had a real problem. 
As usual the land was all fenced, and most of it posted, 
and it was getting dark, and all we got for an answer was 
“I don’t suppose you could!” We went on through Green¬ 
ville, Tennessee, and tried once more. This time we picked 
out a very humble looking station, one withoiA any fine 
fixtures. Just a couple of old gas pumps, and a little coun¬ 
try store with a bit of open meadow to one side. Meekly 
we asked if we could put up our tent for the night and 
the little thin owner answered, without much hesitation, 
“I don’t see why you couldn’t!” 

In Tennessee we passed through two big smoking cities, 
Knoxville and Chattanooga, but for the most part our way 
led through the country. A detour took us up a dusty 
mountain road to a place called Cloudland, in the north¬ 
west corner of Georgia. Cloudland is hidden in the woods 
on a mountain top, a bit of a place with a cabin post- 

26 


office. Here, for the first time on our trip, we were to sleep 
without hearing the whir of traffic in our dreams. 

The postmaster told us, “I guess you can stay on my land. 
You can camp by the lake, down the road a bit.” 

We followed a woods road to the border of a muddy 
lake which lay on top of the highland, several miles from 
the postoffice. It was a real woods camp, far off from any 
house. We were put to sleep by the sounds of night birds, 
and by the deep throaty noises of bullfrogs which set up 
a continuous chugaruming after twilight. In the morning 
the air was cold, so cold that two fence lizards which we 
found at breakfast time were stiffened with exposure and 
did not mind being picked up and handled. 

As we went down the mountain we could see the South 
patterned below us, the South with its cotton fields and its 
orchards and its tobacco plantations. Men were up and 
working between neat planted rows. 

Going southward we drove through a land spotted with 
small, weather-grey shacks, flanked by stone and mud 
chimneys. Idling in the shack doorways, or working in 
the fields were the Negro people, going about their tasks 
with the lithe and sinuous motions so typical of their race, 
lending an exotic note to the countryside with their bril¬ 
liant colored clothes. 

That day we went across Alabama, through Birmingham, 
the Pittsburgh of the South, through the heart of the cot¬ 
ton belt, past big plantations where one of America’s largest 
export crops, King Cotton, was growing. Here, in northern 
Alabama, the plants were up two inches high, and it was 
not yet June. But although the growth of the crop seemed 
advanced to us, we were not yet in the warmest parts of 

27 


the country. We were to find that in southern Texas the 
farmers had planted in early March, and by June io, in 
some places, they would be harvesting. From now on we 
were to see the plant in its various stages of development. 

The United States leads the world in the production of 
cotton. The fibre has long been an important product of 
the two Americas. It was used extensively by the Indians 
before the coming of the Europeans. King Cotton is native 
to many other warm lands, and the birthplace of the vari¬ 
ous species is uncertain. The original stock of our most 
important commercial varieties are said to have been native 
to the Americas. The famous Sea Island cotton which was 
first cultivated on the islands off the coast of South Caro¬ 
lina, probably came from South America; the widely used 
Upland cotton, from Mexico or Central America, and the 
Egyptian cotton, developed in Egypt in the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, and now also grown in the United States, is of un¬ 
known origin, but is similar to the South American species. 
All true Asiatic cottons are quite different from those 
indigenous to the Americas. 

As we drove onward we saw cornfields here and there, 
with the corn up a foot; patches of young peanut plants, 
and white and sweet potatoes. Sixteenth century explorers 
discovering the sweet American tubers, named them sweet 
potatoes, thinking them closely related to American spuds; 
but a sweet potato has subterraneous branches swelled into 
tubers, and belongs to the convolvulus family, and not to 
the true root potato family, Solanum. 

The agricultural crops of the South are of great inter¬ 
est. On our return trip we saw tobacco being cured. We 
went through the rich plantations of North Carolina, the 

28 


state which leads the Union in tobacco production. We 
saw groups of Negro women and boys at work beside 
weather-beaten sheds. With a deft twisting motion the 
Negro women were tying fresh-picked tobacco leaves to 
sticks. When a stick was hung full of leaves the woman 
would shout lustily, “Stick off. Stick off!” Whereupon a 
little Negro boy would come running and take the stick 
from her and carry it into the shed and place it upon a 
rack. The white man in charge of the business invited us 
to step inside and see how things were done. A moist, hot 
air struck our faces. The leaves hung above and all around 
us, tier upon tier, filled the whole of the tall shed which 
was some sixteen or twenty feet in height. The place reeked 
with a heavy warm odor. The heat came from two small 
brick furnaces which were stoked from outside the build¬ 
ing. The foreman stepped up to the thermometer. It reg¬ 
istered ioo° F. 

“We keep her like this, for three or four days. Then we 
run her up to 175° F. to finish her off,” he said. “Some 
fellows run the heat up to 200 0 F., and even higher. But 
it’s pretty dangerous. The barns are liable to catch on fire.” 

He pointed out to us the large sheet iron pipes which 
carried off the smoke. “We use the flue method,” he said. 
“No smoke touches our leaves.” 

He went on to tell us about the other two methods—fire 
curing and air curing. Some export types are dried over 
open fires laid on barn floors. Most of the cigar wrappers 
are air cured, hung in ventilated sheds for five to eight 
weeks. 

“Good tobacco depends upon careful curing,” said the 
foreman. “It’s this way. The leaves are still alive with sap 


29 


when you hang ’em up. You got to let the leaf eat up some 
of the starch, sort of starve itself before it’s killed. The 
water’s got to evaporate slow. There’s lots of sap in a 
green tobacco leaf. Each one’ll be about three fourths water. 
Got to cure ’em slow until they get yellow, then run the 
temperature up gradual. If you make it too hot at first, 
they’ll get spongy or blister.” 

After this talk we handled cigarettes with more interest, 
remembering the rich Negro voices shouting “Stick off! 
Stick off!” and recalling the odor of the leaves curing. 

After Alabama we came to the flatness of Mississippi. 
All the time it was getting warmer. We were down out of 
the Appalachian mountains, going steadily south. In north¬ 
ern Mississippi we saw the first wild palmettos, sprouting 
in the swamp land. We passed through endless miles of pine 
trees, which looked like wounded things, their sides scarred 
with the marks of tapping. Tins were set at newly scraped 
parts to catch the tree sap, used to make turpentine and 
resin. Mississippi produces over a million gallons of tur¬ 
pentine a year, over sixty thousand barrels of resin. In the 
year 1934, she ranked second among the states in the pro¬ 
duction of cotton. We saw also that she raised fine pecan 
nuts, fine potatoes, peanuts, and fruits. 

We camped one night in the pineland of Mississippi, and 
then we were in Louisiana. 


30 


Part Two 


LOUISIANA 











VIEUX CARRE 


M ISSISSIPPI car licenses gave way to plates orna¬ 
mented with jaunty pelicans. We were in 
Louisiana, part of the territory claimed by the 
early French explorers for their king, Louis the Fourteenth. 
Like all American states, Louisiana has acquired a nick¬ 
name. It is known as the “pelican,” just as Connecticut is 
known as the nutmeg, Kentucky the blue grass, and Ne¬ 
braska the cornhusker state. 

We were now entering the humid subtropical belt where 
rice and sugar cane grow, where the air is soft and warm, 
a land of bayous, live oaks, and grey hanging moss. Around 
the horizon were swollen clouds, piled high and white, 
clouds over the Gulf of Mexico which lay unseen, some¬ 
where out beyond the delta land of the Mississippi river 
which meanders in uncertain course out across flat land 
of its own building, and at one point turns back upon 
itself forming a crescent-shaped bend. In this curve lies 
the crescent city, New Orleans, sandwiched in between 
waterways, between a big river and a big salt lake. On 
the south, the Mississippi; on the north, Lake Pontchartrain, 
an inland arm of the sea. 

From highway n there are two possible approaches to 
the city. The shortest route is by a bridge built straight out 

33 


over the waters of the eastern end of the lake. The long¬ 
est route is by a road skirting the shore and crossing over 
the inlet. The former is privately owned and takes toll, sixty 
cents for two people, round trip fare. The latter is a free 
route. Here, at the parting of the ways, we first felt the 
influence of the Kingfish, then the dictator of affairs of 
Louisiana, the share-the-wealth orator, the big, burly master 
of all ceremonies, Huey P. Long. 

At a soda fountain, the jerker boasted, “We got the finest 
roads in the country. Wait’ll you see. Yes suh. No toll 
bridges heah. No suh. Huey Long done put our state on 
the map, he has.” 

We pointed out that Pontchartrain was marked toll. The 
young fellow’s reply to this was that it was the only one left 
in all Louisiana. Significantly, it was in the hands of re¬ 
ceivers. As we went on across the state we found the boasts 
of the soda jerker somewhat justified. The roads were 
perhaps not the best in the Union, but they were good, and 
we did not encounter any toll bridges. It was a decided relief 
not to have to pay toll. We had journeyed across many 
rivers coming southward. Toll collection was the rule rather 
than the exception. It had cost us fifty cents to cross the 
Hudson on the George Washington bridge; another half 
dollar, at Pascagoula, Mississippi, the “city of the singing 
river;” a half dollar, also, at the Tombigbee river; thirty 
cents at the Tennessee, and so on. Now we were in a state 
that had abolished toll. Many of the bridges over which 
we passed bore a sign announcing that they had been built 
under the administrations of Governors Long and Allen. 
The name of the deceased Kingfish is thus sung from one 
end of the state to the other. He made travel cheap and 

34 


easy in Louisiana. Under his direction the alternative route 
which skirted the eastern banks of Pontchartrain was con¬ 
structed, making it unnecessary to pay to enter New Orleans, 
but the bridge route is scenic and pleasant, and worth 
all of sixty cents if you have it. It was our choice and we 
enjoyed the over water drive. 

Soon after leaving the lake we came into the city. The 
approaching boulevard is palm lined. Graceful trees spring 
from the ground with long, clean trunks, majestic heads 
held skyward, swaying over the tops of small Negro shan¬ 
ties. But shortly the boulevard leads into the core of the 
city which is an active metropolis, modern in every sense, 
never perhaps as madly scurrying as 42nd street New York, 
but a crowded, lively business district, nevertheless. To many 
northerners this aspect of the city is a distinct shock. To 
them New Orleans has always meant gayety, old worldliness, 
Mardi Gras festivities, old French houses, history and “at¬ 
mosphere.” Everything, in short, that is comparatively 
rare in New York or Chicago. They forget that New Or¬ 
leans is the largest city in the south, that it has a popula¬ 
tion of 459,000, that it is very important as a commercial 
center, and ranks high as a port of entry. But if visitors 
have patience, they will find what they are looking for. 
There is probably no place in the United States that has 
more real “atmosphere.” The march of progress has not 
yet blotted out the old city. There are many places of 
historic interest, places such as the old slave market. Turn 
into the Vieux Carre and you find time looking backward. 

We drove directly across the modern section, going at 
once into the old quarter which spreads outward from the 
banks of the Mississippi river. There we followed streets 

35 


lined with weathered, paintless houses, dark, mysterious 
houses, with windows and doors shuttered to keep out the 
hot sun; delicate iron grillwork balconies recalling past 
glory. On the street corners we heard French Americans 
chattering in their ancestral tongue. 

The produce market in the quarter is of vital interest. 
We found the place throbbing with life, active with modern 
commerce, at the same time reminiscent of trading days 
of long ago, a confused mingling of the picturesque with 
the commercial, a lusty, sweating melee of stevedores, truck¬ 
men, horses, drays, trucks, and trailers. Several blocks are 
covered with sheds storing hundreds of packing cases, 
hundreds of barrels, hundreds of sacks of food stuffs; but 
the real activity centers on historic Decatur Street where 
for many years the fruit and vegetable, fish and meat markets 
have been located. We toured up and down the length of 
the place, past stalls set up under sheds on the open street, 
past building after building from which issued a succession 
of distinctive odors, a wealth of odors from fresh produce, 
and some few smells from the litter of old cabbage leaves, 
banana skins, onions, forgotten underfoot. A great babble 
and stir surrounded the stalls. Trucks moved in and out 
of alleyways, backing up to warehouses to discharge or 
receive cargo. Long trailers piled high with bales of cotton 
trundled past. The truckmen made a hullabaloo. The 
merchants were noisily driving bargains with small dealers 
who were apparently looking for over-ripe bananas, toma¬ 
toes, or pineapples at reduced prices. And the whole place 
was colored by the dark note of Africa, the big black Negroes 
passing majestically back and forth with sacks or baskets 
held high upon their heads. 

36 



And the whole place was colored by the dar\ 
note of Africa, the big, blac\ Negroes pass¬ 
ing majestically bac\ and forth with sac\s 
or baskets held high upon their heads. 























As we entered one building, a fresh fruit odor and the 
earth odors of potatoes and root vegetables reached our 
noses. Piled in a mass of luscious color were soft, peach¬ 
skinned mangoes, big green watermelons, striped gourds, 
clumps of yellow bananas, baskets of purple plums, new 
potatoes, tropical pineapples, crates of oranges, red tomatoes 
and green vegetables. Woven strings of onions and garlic 
hung odoriferously over bulging sacks. Food at the market 
is good, bananas ripe and yellow, sweet potatoes big and 
tasty. Fried bananas and sweet potatoes make a good camp 
lunch. 

The retail merchants were of all types and ages, from 
old aproned women, to young hawk-nosed men; but old 
or young, they were individualists. If they had an idea 
about price fixing, they tried it on us. We asked one fel¬ 
low, “How much are your grapes?” He was a large man 
with a flabby face, pendulous underlip and mushroom 
nose. 

“Fifteen cents a pound, mam. Two for thirty five!” he 
replied, breathing stentoriously through his flat nose. 

“But two pounds would be thirty cents,” we protested. 

“I ain’t makin’ no money at that,” he said in a take-it- 
or-leave-it tone. “My grapes is one pound for fifteen. Two 
for thirty five.” 

In general, retail prices were about the same as at chain 
stores: large pineapples, twenty five cents, ten cents for 
small ones; tiny red ball oranges for one cent a-piece. Man¬ 
goes were expensive, fifteen cents each. 

We bought one mango, and going down the street we 
peeled and bit into the slippery meat, tasting its delicate 
melon and nut flavor. We followed our noses to the fish 


39 


market. Almost a block distant, heavy sea smells pene¬ 
trated the warm southern air, while the fish stalls them¬ 
selves were overhung by a blanket of odors from clams, 
sea fish, and barrels of fresh shrimp. 

Following our noses yet farther we came to one of the 
famous market cafes. It was midday, siesta time in the 
South. On the streets, the Negro workers flopped down 
in the shade of trucks, their sleeping bodies doubled up like 
old sacks. Others were out like ourselves, looking for a 
meal. Truckmen, merchants, buyers were getting them¬ 
selves steins of beer, cups of coffee, and a bite to eat. Now 
these market cafes may not have fancy service, but they 
are real food shops. Food is good in quality and quantity. 

The coffee shop which is in the fruit and vegetable build¬ 
ing prints its menu in white paint on mirrors which rise 
in gleaming succession above long marble counters. It was 
here that we discovered “Poor Boy Sandwiches.” I ordered 
one, out of curiosity, a roast beef. I expected to get some¬ 
thing tough like old roast horse. The waiter brought a half 
loaf of French bread, sliced in two parts, and between the 
slices were great slabs of roast beef smothered in juicy dress¬ 
ing. The sandwich was so immense that it was hard to get 
my teeth around it. It was a real meal for a truck driver 
and cost ten cents. 

Near us, stevedores, old men and young, dressed in khaki, 
blue jeans, and battered hats, were eating spaghetti and 
meat balls for ten cents, large steaks for twenty cents, or 
big cheese sandwiches for ten, and heaping plates of shrimp 
for fifteen. On the far side of the bar the Negro workmen 
were eating at their own special counters. 

Besides Poor Boy sandwiches, Louisiana offcx^ cheap 

40 


beer. They are back on the five-cents-a-glass schedule. For 
ten cents you can get a twenty-four ounce stein, and we saw 
a placard in one cafe offering—“All the beer you can drink 
for sixty cents an hour. ,, 

Later we wandered down Decatur Street to the railroad 
yards and docks where the grand old Mississippi river comes 
swelling, wide and deep, a traffic lane for big boats with 
fruit and varied cargoes from the tropics and other zones. 
The meat market is located overlooking the railroad yards, 
and in this building is the Cafe Du Mond, known far and 
near for its fine French coffee. The restaurant is white and 
clean, and there are little white tables for guests to eat at. 
In the afternoon the cafe is deserted, and at odd hours, 
closed. When the meat comes in, usually in the wee small 
hours of morning, the place is lively and full of men. It 
keeps active until the meat is sold. We ordered coffee and 
doughnuts. A one-eyed waiter brought us coffee and buns, 
without holes and unsweetened. 

“What do you call these things?” we asked. 

“Them’s just doughnuts,” he replied. These buns are 
what we got in several places in Louisiana for doughnuts. 

The chamber of commerce reports that parts of the mar¬ 
ket are to be rebuilt. The city has drawn up plans for a 
modern farmers’ building. The fish and vegetable market 
which dates from 1816 will remain untouched, and further¬ 
more the authorities promise that the spirit of the old 
French quarter will be preserved. Maybe. Its roots are 
deep in the soil. The place was officially founded in the 
year 1791 when Louisiana was a colony of Spain. It had 
its beginning on the open levee front, where for years 

4i 


trader had met trader, Indian, Spanish and French trap¬ 
pers and vendors. The Halle des Boucheries, the meat mar¬ 
ket, followed. Today, the place has about it the true quality 
of age. 

The history of New Orleans is dramatic, stirring. The 
city’s location was early recognized as a strategic point by 
European powers who were struggling to grasp and hold 
colonial wealth. At heart the city is French. The land 
where it is situated was claimed for France by the great 
explorer La Salle, colonized by the people of France, and 
the city was named for the regent, Duke of Orleans. Greedy, 
empire-minded nations kept their eyes upon the city, port 
of the Mississippi river, ocean port of entry, key to a vast 
territory. Kept under French rule for the initial period of 
settlement, the early destiny of Louisiana was arranged by 
secret treaty in Europe—ceded to Spain, taken back again 
by Napoleon, and almost immediately sold to the “bar¬ 
baric Americans.” The people have in turn been under 
French, Spanish, American, and Confederate flags. 

The creole city, meanwhile, grew apace, weathering a 
stormy birth. Its early history is one of turmoil, struggle 
and battle, political and plague illness, frequent poverty; 
yet, through it all the inhabitants have retained their charm¬ 
ing, old-world ways of life, entertaining with southern hos¬ 
pitality. 

The Spaniards left their mark upon the city. For forty 
years Louisiana belonged to colonial Spain. During this 
period a part of the city was burned. Rebuilt, the wide 
arches, the hand-wrought iron grill work, the courtyards, 
show the mark of the Spanish architects. 

With the history of battle, political change, city growth, 


42 


are mingled legends of pirates, hidden treasure, smuggling, 
privateering. In French colonial times there was a fine 
profit to be had on contraband goods. During the interval 
of Spanish control, the tariff on imported articles was so 
high that smuggling became almost a necessity. In the early 
nineteenth century Louisiana had become a hotbed of priva¬ 
teers. Baratarians, these freebooters were called, named 
from the old French word meaning “cheap things.” They 
plied their trade in among the islands that fringe the Bay 
of Barataria which lies west of the Mississippi, and is 
sheltered from the open gulf by the island Grand Terre 
where, about 1810, the smugglers established their head¬ 
quarters. They slipped in and out among the maze of small 
islands that line the coast, sailed upon the inland water¬ 
ways, the slow moving bayous. 

Legend has much to say about die colorful careers of 
these fellows. Their leader, one Jean Lafitte, has been set 
upon a pedestal, has become a pirate hero, taking his place 
with laurels among the great in pirate history. All this, 
in spite of the fact that he always maintained that he was 
not a pirate, but a lawful privateer. Jean and his brother 
Pierre first appear, in legend, in a blacksmith shop in New 
Orleans where they engaged in overseeing Negro smithies. 
The birthland of the three Lafitte brothers is shrouded in 
mystery. One authority says that they were born in Bor¬ 
deaux, France in the year 1780. Be that as it may, Jean 
and Pierre were soon launched upon a far more profitable 
business than that of blacksmithing, the somewhat nefari¬ 
ous enterprise of privateering, smuggling goods in large 
quantities into Louisiana. Their actions were viewed with 
suspicion. They moved to Barataria, there to live and dine 

43 


and wine in luxury, enjoying seafood and tropical fruits. 
Guests were treated royally. 

The overlord of Barataria is described by an eye witness 
as a “—stout, rather gentlemanly personage, some five feet 
ten inches in height, dressed very simply in a foraging cap 
and blue frock of a most villainous fit; his complexion, like 
most creoles, olive; his countenance full, mild and rather 
impressive, but for a small black eye, which now and then, 
as he grew animated in conversation, would flash in a way 
that impressed me with a notion that ‘II Capitano’ might be, 
when aroused, a very ‘ugly customer.’ ” 

Opinions vary as to his true character. His actions were 
often gentlemanly and at times patriotic, at others piratical. 

When revenue officers came to Barataria to collect duty, 
they would find the Baratarians gone, taken flight up some 
bayou, forewarned by one of the band. The business of 
the Lafitte brothers grew and expanded until it cut seri¬ 
ously into the internal revenue of the United States. Where¬ 
upon, in March, 1813, Governor Claiborne ordered the Bara¬ 
tarians to disband. They did not see fit to comply with the 
governor’s orders, and when Claiborne put a price of $500.00 
on the head of the leader, Jean, for delivery to any sheriff 
in the United States, the pirate retaliated with a price thirty 
times $500.00 upon the head of the governor! The illicit 
trade continued. Goods were auctioned at Grand Terre 
and delivered with little interruption. 

In the war of 1812 the British made overtures to Jean, 
offering money and rank to the smugglers if they would 
join with the English and attack New Orleans. Whereupon 
Lafitte turned the letter over to the American authorities 
and offered the services of himself and his men to the Union. 


44 


After some consideration the Union accepted. The Bara- 
tarians fought bravely against the Britishers in the battle 
of New Orleans. In return they were given full pardon by 
the president of the United States. At this propitious mo¬ 
ment the Lafittes left Barataria and the city of New Or¬ 
leans. But it is not long before we again hear of Jean, 
farther south, on the island of Galveston. Up to his old 
tricks! 


45 


FATHER OF WATERS 


L EAVING New Orleans we stopped at a cafe on the 
edge of the city for a five cent glass of good Louisiana 
beer. Nils had our camera slung over one shoulder. 
The bartender looked at our unironed clothes and said, 
“How’s the thumbin’?” 

As a matter of fact there were few hitchhikers out on the 
road in the summer of ’35, but neither were there many 
campers in this section. The Louisianans classified the two 
together. 

We got into conversation with the bartender, and in¬ 
evitably the career of Huey P. Long was one of the chief 
topics. For, at that time, Huey was in fine form. His glitter¬ 
ing share-the-wealth ideas and his dictatorial actions were 
stirring up considerable mud and confusion, arousing nation¬ 
wide astonishment. 

The bartender paused as he leveled the foam off the tops 
of the glasses. 

“He’s O.K. to us,” he said. “You know he’ll come in here 
just like any other guy. He’s one of our best customers. 
Ask old George here. He ought to know. Hey, George!” 

A lean old waiter came forward with a plate poised in 
midair. 

“Why, Hell, I got my job through Huey Long!” 

46 


His friend boasted to Nils, “Well, colonel, we got roads 
better’n any state in the union. We done away with toll 
bridges. That’s all his doin’. And what’s more, he treats us 
people like we was as good as anybody else.” 

As we went on across Louisiana we heard great talk of 
Huey and his doings. The road men all said, “It’d be a 
better world with more men like him in it.” The working 
women remembered that he had kept schools open when it 
had looked as though many would have to shut their doors. 
They vowed that if Huey were put up for president, they 
would cast their votes for him. It seemed as if the whole 
state, the working people that is, were singing Huey’s 
song, all but one old fisherman whose immediate retort 
was, “Huey Long? Ain’t nobody likes him . He’s nothin’ 
but a bio wed up balloon!” 

Across the border in Texas there were plenty of people 
that agreed with the fisherman. They thought that the 
Kingfish was “smart all right,” but looking for too much 
power to suit their way of thinking. But that’s all over 
now. The Kingfish is gone. 

We drove directly out of New Orleans, heading for open 
country where we could pitch a tent. We came to the 
Mississippi, great river, Rio del Espiritu Santo, mighty 
stream. There the road stopped by a skeleton of a bridge 
which jutted out halfway across the water. The bridge 
has since been completed, but at that time the only way to 
get to the other side was by ferry. This way was perhaps 
more fun than by bridge. As we ran our car out onto 
the old ferry, we thought of the historic days, the pioneer 
days when the river was of tremendous importance as a 
highway, when hundreds of flatboats and barges entered 

47 


the port of New Orleans yearly, when steamboats came into 
their glory, and were the chosen method of good travel, 
when the Mississippi was a gay traffic highway. Shortly 
after the Civil war, commerce fell off; there were lean 
years when the river was almost deserted. Yet, she has a 
fine navigation channel, nine feet or more in depth, and 
at least 300 feet wide for a distance of 842 miles. The bed 
itself averages a mile in width. Nowadays, there appears 
to be somewhat of a revival of freighting. A net total of 
11,695,982 tons passed between Minneapolis and New Or¬ 
leans in the year 1929. A large tonnage of sugar, crude rub¬ 
ber, tobacco, rice, coffee, canned goods, oysters, lobsters, 
clams, shrimps, milk, sirup and molasses, cotton, textiles, 
wood pulp, paper, cement, coal, coke, kerosene, gasoline, 
pig iron, bar steel, sulphur, rock sulphate, logs, crude oil, 
and other commodities are taken from one port to another 
on barges, rafts, and steamers. 

Arriving on the far side, we found that a road followed 
close by the left bank. Here in the delta region so much 
silt has been deposited that the water is at least ten feet 
above the surrounding land, and held within its bed by 
retaining walls, so that, from the roadway on the level 
ground, it is not possible to see the stream. Only the thick, 
grass-covered embankments are visible, and sitting on the 
ridge of these were lots of Negroes watching Old Man 
River move by. We climbed up to see it too, and it was 
going along with a slow roll, and at that point, not a boat 
in sight. It was lonely looking in spite of the revived com¬ 
merce, but we knew that it was working, carrying a lot 
of mud and silt from the floods up-country. It was deep 
and powerful looking, and the Negroes were watching it 

48 


with respect, just as in the early days the Indians must have 
watched the Father of Waters, with admiration, respect, 
fear and worship. There is something fascinating about this 
deep river, winding along like a tremendous boa con¬ 
strictor, forever cutting into one bank or the other, pouring 
water through his wide channel, looking calm and peace¬ 
ful in the summer afternoon. Yet one cannot forget the 
floods up-country, everyone is conscious that at any moment 
it might lash itself into a fury and rise up and smother 
the land with disaster. The only two rivers in the world in 
the same class with the Mississippi are the Nile and the 
Amazon, both mighty waterways. The Mississippi and its 
tributaries present 15,000 miles of navigable waterways. The 
alluvial valley covers about 20,000,000 acres of land. 

The river commission is presented with a hard problem, 
the control of the Mississippi in flood times. The mere 
strength of embankments avails little against its power. 
It can sweep away walls as if they were feathers. After 
the terrible floods of 1927, Congress instigated a ten-year 
project, to tame it. Experts knew that the only way to 
hold it was to give it plenty of room, all the room it 
wanted, and let it rage. Already completed is the Bonnet 
Carre spillway, about twenty miles above the city of New 
Orleans. This spillway will divert excess water into big 
Lake Pontchartrain, thence to the gulf. The rest of the allu¬ 
vial valley is to be guarded by strong levees, built not directly 
on the banks but some distance back, walling off a reserve 
area. The levees will be from twenty to thirty feet high, 
200 to 500 feet wide at the base. When all of them are 
constructed, something like 597,000,000 cubic yards of 
earth will have been moved, more than twice as much 


49 


earth as was moved in the building of the Panama canal. 

The great river, source of mystery and wonder to early 
explorers, was given many names by its succeeding discov¬ 
erers. To the Indians it was known as Father of Waters. 
In 1519 Spanish Alvarez de Pineda, pilot and agent of the 
governor of Jamaica, discovered the mouth of the stream 
which he christened Rio del Espiritu Santo. He reported the 
land near by to be inhabited by both pygmies and giants, 
and that gold in the country was plentiful. In those days 
little was known about the inhabitants of the Americas, 
or the geography of the two continents. Passage to India, 
a water passage to the Orient, was the hoped-for goal of 
many an explorer. In fact, it is said by some, that over 
150 years after Pineda’s discovery, Frenchman La Salle 
started on his explorations believing that the river had its 
source in Asia! Parkman says that La Salle— “—dreamed 
of a passage to the South Sea, and a new road for commerce 
to the riches of China and Japan.” Upon hearing of the 
Ohio from the Indians, the Frenchman believed that this 
river must flow into the Vermilion sea, as the Gulf of Cali¬ 
fornia was then termed. There, he proposed to find the 
sought-after trade route to the Far East. From Montreal 
he set forth, reaching the gulf on his second expedition. 
He claimed the whole water shed “—from the mouth of 
the great river St. Louis, otherwise called the Ohio—as also 
along the River Colbert,* or Mississippi—as far as its mouth 
at the sea, or Gulf of Mexico, and also to the mouth of the 
River of Palms.” f A vast province, Louisiana, for King 
Louis of France. 

* After the French minister, Colbert. 

t River of Palms—The Rio Grande. 


50 


On Marquette’s map the Mississippi is designated as the 
River de Conception. On another early Jesuit map it is 
marked as Mitchisipi or Grande Riviere; on still another 
old French map, the Riviere Buade, after the family name 
of Frontenac. The gentleman of Elvas, historian for Span¬ 
ish Hernando de Soto speaks of the Rio Grande del Florida. 
All these names are reminiscent of the great days of explora¬ 
tion. But in the end, the Indian name survived, Mississippi, 
Father of Waters, well chosen. 


5i 


BAYOUS AND CANALS 


T HE road we followed was flanked by grey houses. 
As we drove on, darkness came and the country 
took on a mysterious appearance. Lights popped 
out in the houses. All about were the black people. A 
fog came up over the flatness, and in the slow-moving 
bayous which crisscrossed the land everywhere, hundreds 
of frogs set up a terrific din. The heat was humid and op¬ 
pressive, and with the night came one of the worst pests of 
our trip, the mosquitoes. They stayed in the cool underside 
of leaves during the sun hours, but after sunset, out they 
came, singing and looking about for a place to plant their 
needle stingers. It was all right as long as we kept going, 
but if we stopped, they lit upon us and had a merry time. 
As all campers know, it is hard to find a camp ground at 
night, particularly in a country where there are poisonous 
snakes. The land was all low and swampy, a paradise for 
water moccasins. 

At Luling we turned south from the Mississippi. We 
drove on and on. At last we found a bit of high land, an 
old abandoned road, with a bayou on one hand and a rail¬ 
road on the other. We were fearful of pitching our tent 
in the tall grass. There is a common saying that snakes 
never move about after nightfall, but this is a fallacy. We 

52 


have seen them crawling in the dark. It was a black night, 
and we imagined that the place was alive with reptiles. 
We decided to sit up in the car and sleep as well as we 
could under the circumstances. We spread the mosquito 
netting over the top of the auto, and, thus settled, we shone 
out white like some kind of ghost in the fog. The mosquitoes 
sang loudly. Somehow the whole place was particularly 
ghostly, and, to top matters off, we hadn’t been there five 
minutes before a frightening apparition appeared out of 
nowhere, a tall creature with one eye in its head, moving, 
blinking weirdly along the bank of the bayou. Well, neither 
Nils nor I believed in ghosts, but we just couldn’t figure 
that thing out. We thought of will-o’-the-wisps and haunt¬ 
ing spirits, and finally I couldn’t stand the suspense any 
longer. We plucked off our mosquito net and drove along 
the road to the spot where the thing was. It did not move, 
but gradually resolved itself into a human form. It was a 
big black Negro, with an electric light in the middle of 
his forehead, and a long pole in his hands. 

“I’se just froggin’, suh,” he said, looking at us with ap¬ 
prehension. 

We asked him if he knew who owned the land, and would 
anyone mind if we spent the night there ? And he replied, 
“You can camp dere, all right. I don’t guess no one will 
bother you, suh.” 

We drove back up the road, and settled ourselves once 
more, and no one did bother us. We dozed until the first 
light of dawn came over the misty bayou. Then we stretched 
our cramped limbs and looked about us to see what man¬ 
ner of country we were in. There, immediately in front 
of our car was a sight to make most people shudder—a 


53 


fat-bodied water moccasin, or cotton mouth as he is often 
called. He was a big specimen, nearly four feet long. 
There is something sinister, and at the same time hypnoti¬ 
cally fascinating about snakes. This one was gliding slowly 
along about his business. When we cut off his retreat with 
a stick, he turned on us and displayed a pugnacious spirit. 
He raised his head and struck viciously, showing the white 
inside of his mouth from which he gets his name, cotton 
mouth. When we finally let him pass, he beat a hasty re¬ 
treat, as most snakes will. He belongs to the pit viper fam¬ 
ily which includes most of the North American poisonous 
snakes. They are named for the pits, of unknown use, situ¬ 
ated between eye and nostril. They are thick-bodied snakes, 
with triangular-shaped heads. Two long fangs are attached 
to a movable bone in the front of their upper jaws. When 
the snake strikes, the fangs come down into position from 
the roof of the mouth where they lie when not in use. The 
fangs inject poison in much the same manner that a hypo¬ 
dermic needle injects serum or medicine. 

Harmless water snakes are often mistaken for cotton 
mouths. They like the same environment. Along the bayous 
of Louisiana we saw many of both species. The low lying 
jungle swamps seemed to provide just the right home for 
them. Before sun-up we surprised several as they crossed 
the highway. We also saw that many had been squashed 
by the night drivers. 

In the South the early morning is a delightful time of the 
day to drive. The land of the coastal plain is rich and tropi¬ 
cal looking. Mist rises from the network of bayous, the 
sluggish delta streams. The air is cool. There is life to be 
seen by the roadside, reptiles moving from swamp to swamp 

54 



There was a sight to ma\e most people 
shudder —a fat-bodied water mocassin, or 
cotton mouth, as he is often called . 


















in the dewy grass, snakes and turtles. After the sun is up, 
they are rarely seen along the main highways. 

There are no large towns in this section, but here and 
there are tiny villages, a few wooden shacks, a small store, 
and always a church. The Negro people are great church¬ 
goers, and on Sundays in the South, they stroll along the 
main highways all decked out in gay clothes, on their way 
to the meetinghouse. On one occasion we saw boatloads 
of them being poled across a narrow bayou to the place of 
worship which was on the far bank. 

We spent several days camping beside Bayou des Alle- 
mands which reflects the town of Des Allemands in its 
waters. We set up our tent near the new bridge. To say 
that it was hot is a mild statement. Evidently, it was an 
unusually warm spell, so warm that the eggs which we 
planned to cook for lunch, burst before we got them into 
the frying pan, and the butter turned to soupy consistency, 
and the canned milk soured. Thereafter we substituted 
apple and peanut butter spreads, and powdered milk, and 
our breakfasts were eggless. 

At the small restaurant in town the waitress was mopping 
her forehead. “Ain’t it hot! See how I’m sweatin’,” she’d 
say, by way of greeting. Sweat also ran down our faces 
and backs, and the one way that we could endure the noon¬ 
day, was by sitting under the newly constructed bridge. 
Here, the only breeze near town sucked under the bridge 
supports. We could sit in comfort, Nils painting, I watching 
the life in the water. Along towards evening the big, 
muddy-looking gar fish would rise gracefully up to the 
surface of the water, and dive down under rhythmically. 
In length they averaged three feet. Big fish, but the natives 

57 


tell that many a time they have seen one all of seven feet 
long. Occasionally we could see the dark fin of a shark 
cut the water sharply, and now and then a pea roll boat 
went by. The pea roll, a cross between a canoe and a kayak, 
looks delicate to handle. 

The roadmen, the fishermen, and a woman who sold crabs 
came to visit us before we had been there long. They 
watched the painting with some interest, and varied ex¬ 
clamations. 

“My, ain’t that pretty now?” said the crab woman. A road 
worker dismissed the picture with, “Every man to his own 
tastes, 1 says.” Then he tried to scare us with alligator 
stories. 

“Lots of big ol’ fellows in them swamps,” he said. “You 
catch a little one, a baby. The mother alligator, she hear 
him holler. She come a runnin’. Yes suh! They run fast 
all right. Could catch you, easy!” 

There was a young fisherman who was not to be outdone 
with reptile stories. 

“Do you know what I do?” he asked. “I train king 
snake. Lemme tell you. King snake, he kill rattlesnakes and 
rats. One day a fellow say he got lotta rats. 1 say I bet ten 
dollars in my pocket, I catch ’em. He laugh. But I take 
my king snake, put his head on my shoulder, and let him 
climb around my arm. The king snake he no do me 
nuthin’. The other fellow, he say, what I do? What you 
think I did, huh? I take king snake, show him one dead 
rat. I lay rat by his nose. Snake he no do me nuthin’. 
Pretty soon he kill off all the man’s rats for him. Tomorrow, 
I bring snake for you,” he added. We soon found that there 
was a string attached to the offer. 

58 


The fellow was greatly interested in the painting. He 
watched the work in silence for a while. Then he said, 
“You know I like pictures. I take ’em home. Hang ’em 
on the wall. You know, you can give your bes’ frien’ a 
picture!” 

Here, as in many of the bayou villages, the speech of the 
white people was not always a typical southern drawl. 
Like the young fisherman, they often spoke with a distinct 
foreign accent, and we met some who knew only the native 
tongue of their French ancestors. According to the inhabi¬ 
tants, Des Allemands had originally been settled by the 
Germans, as the name implies. But later, many French 
moved into the town. 

At sunset the bayou became very beautiful. The bril¬ 
liant colors in the sky would reflect in the quiet waters, 
and the red-roofed houses of the town, and the big rain 
water barrels would repeat themselves beside the lush laven¬ 
der flowering water hyacinths. Islands of these plants 
floated dreamily past with the current. They are one of the 
most lovely of flowers, but a commercial liability. The plant 
is known as the “million dollar weed.” It is graceful in 
form, has lily-like leaves, lavender blooms, and stems which 
are enlarged into air bulbs and which act as supports to 
keep them afloat. If they happen to reach shallow water 
at flowering time, they will sink their feathery roots down 
into mud. But in the deeper bayous they cluster together 
and drift in masses with the current and the tidewater. So 
prolifically do they grow that they fill the southern water¬ 
ways, completely choking them. A fisherman told us that 
the government had been sending out boats to kill them 
off with poison. We could see that some plants were dry 

59 


and brown on the shore, but they weren’t all dead by any 
means. More kept coming, and more and more, until the 
width of the bayou would be covered. Then they would 
pass on down out of view, to be followed by yet another 
island. 

At sunset we would hurry up to town to get a cool drink 
before bedtime. Bedtime was necessarily early, because, at 
dusk, out would come the mosquitoes in such numbers 
that it was not pleasant to be anywhere except under our 
mosquito bar. About nine o’clock the air would begin to 
cool, and we usually had to pull a couple of blankets over 
us before morning, which, for us, was dawn. That first 
night we were awakened by a deep throaty bellow, the roar 
of one of those old bull alligators rousing us from our 
dreams. But we never did see him or any of his tribe, in 
Louisiana. 

The crab woman lived near us, in a small neat house¬ 
boat, painted white with green trimmings. The boat was 
pulled up on shore. The woman was in a predicament. 
She was settled about one hundred yards away from the 
road, and her sign, CRABS—io CENTS, didn’t bring her 
many customers any more. 

She was a nice woman with a pleasant grin. She always 
wore a sunbonnet and a blue smock, and black stockings 
and black high shoes. She came often to visit us under 
the bridge or in our tent, and we soon got to know the ins 
and outs of her life. 

“I’m a widder,” she said. “My husband made good money 
in his time, but he drunk it all up. Then he died, and didn’t 
leave me no money, not a penny. So I took to sellin’ crabs. 
Once when the crabs weren’t bitin’, I wrote a letter to New 

60 


Orleans to get on relief. Well, I didn’t get no answer. So 
one morning I gets up and hitch hikes into the city. Well, 
those fellows down there, they tell me I don’t need no re¬ 
lief. So next time they comes around lookin’ for my vote, 
I’ll send ’em packin’!” 

Her troubles are now over, because the road men have 
agreed to move her houseboat shanty down beside the 
new road, and there she will have a good location for selling 
crabs. 

We bought a dozen of her supply. She caught them with 
a net from a smelly cage where they were kept in the waters 
of the bayou. Then she showed us how to boil them for 
ten or fifteen minutes, break them and clean them, and serve 
them up with plenty of pepper and salt. They tasted mighty 
good. 

Leaving Bayou des Allemands, we set out to find a coast 
route. The idea of swimming in the Gulf was most inviting. 
On the map there was a road marked, running from Abbe¬ 
ville south, thence to Pecan Island and west to Cameron 
where there was said to be a fine beach. 

We followed national highway 90, the old Spanish Trail, 
through Houma the “fur capital,” through Morgan City, 
and there we enquired about the condition of the roads. 

“Part of the road to Pecan Island and Cameron is not 
made yet,” they told us. “You can go on horseback, not 
in a car.” Most of the coast of Louisiana is marshland, very 
flat and low, alluvial land, which makes road building ex¬ 
pensive and difficult. Much of the country we wanted to 
visit was given over to huge game preserves, the largest 
in the United States: the Rockefeller Foundation with 
85,000 acres, the Audubon Society with 26,000 acres, the 

61 


Mcllhenny with 13,000 acres, the Russel Sage with 176,000 
acres and others. In a very few places roads have been built 
down to the coast but the southernmost, east-west route 
keeps fifteen to thirty miles inland. For an overnight camp¬ 
ing place we were directed to a “fine beach at South Bend,” 
a small town marked on the East Cote Blanche Bay. It 
sounded like an attractive place. 

From Centreville a country road led us through a regular 
jungle, lined with big moss-hung cypress trees and live 
oaks. The undergrowth was thick and tropical, studded 
with palmettos. 

Spanish moss is a beautiful and interesting plant. It hangs 
in great profusion, as if softly garlanding the trees for 
some gala occasion. In the sunshine, it is silvery grey, and 
at night it makes an eerie filter for stars and moonlight. 
At first glance it appears to be smothering the wide spread¬ 
ing branches of the great live oak trees, and the high tops 
of the great rooted swamp cypress. According to common 
belief the plant is a parasite, and does injury to the trees 
upon which it hangs. But the plant is not a true parasite. 
It is an epiphyte, or plant living on air. It survives for 
some time on telephone wires. Although commonly known 
as a moss, naturalists classify it as a flowering plant be¬ 
longing to the pineapple family. Its bloom is small and is 
rarely noticed. The country near the coast was uninter¬ 
rupted jungle land hung with great quantities of this beau¬ 
tiful plant. 

Presently we came to a wide deep canal, the intracoastal 
waterway, winding sluggishly through the flat land. A 
ferry was just coming back from the far side. The ferry¬ 
man asked us what our business was. 

62 


“To get to the beach,” we said. 

“What beach? There’s no beach around here. Just mud 
and shell,” he replied. 

“Well, what’s at the town of South Bend?” 

“There ain’t no such town,” said the ferryman. “Only a 
big sugar plantation, and the owner won’t let you pass.” 

We consulted a map which was issued by one of the big 
oil companies. We pointed out the town marked South 
Bend, but the ferryman insisted that there was no such 
town. On the whole the data compiled by the oil companies 
is reliable—accurate about the main routes—sometimes not 
up to date on side roads. In this case the map was mislead¬ 
ing. Perhaps this is not surprising, because the land border¬ 
ing the Gulf is in many places but a jungle or desert, un¬ 
developed. Few people know much about the great coastal 
stretches of this part of the South. In some instances the 
chambers of commerce helped us, but they were informed 
only about their immediate vicinity. 

After short deliberation we decided to take a look at the 
Louisiana coast, in spite of discouragement. The ferryman 
said that we could get to the water’s edge without going 
onto the plantation. 

“But it’ll be muddy,” he added. “All the water going 
through the canal and coming down the rivers keeps the 
Gulf almost fresh off shore, in the summer time.” 

He put us across on his ferry which was run by power 
from an old Ford engine. There was no toll. Driving on, 
we came to a small group of grey shacks. An old white 
man stood idly in front of one of the houses. He approached 
us, hitching up his suspenders. A couple of younger men 
followed, staring. 


63 


“Take the shell road to my land,” he said when he heard 
that we were looking for the coast. “Go down to the 
water and have all the fun you want to.” 

We took his advice, and soon came to a small clearing 
occupied by four or five automobiles. We got out of the 
car and looked at the Gulf. There it was, the great Gulf of 
Mexico, muddy brackish water by a shore of mud and 
shell. Some people were out with nets, after crabs, but 
the water did not look inviting for a swim. There was 
no room to camp. The small clearing was entirely occupied 
by the people who were fishing. 

We returned to the intracoastal canal. On the banks we 
stopped for lunch. The heat was oppressive, muggy. The 
ferryman invited us up under the shade of a wooden lean- 
to which deflected the sun rays. There, in the midst of 
a bevy of dogs, old hound dogs, we cooked lunch. The 
animals were flopped down on the ground overcome by the 
weather. But when we spread our lunch upon a bench, with 
a hunk of cheese the center of attraction, the long noses 
of the hounds raised up, sniffed, and soon the bodies of 
the dogs raised up too, and with the plaintive, sad-eyed 
expressions that hound dogs have, they begged for tidbits. 
They liked everything but the roast corn. They licked the 
salt off the kernels but declined to chew the ears. 

In reply to our invitation to lunch, the ferryman said, 
“We get our own lunch, me and the night man, cook some¬ 
thin’ hot every day.” With these words he went down into 
the old houseboat which lay upon the quiet waters like 
a set for a shanty movie. And when he was gone we sat 
in the silence of the noonday heat, watching the deserted, 
muddy canal. There wasn’t a boat going up or down, just 

64 


the water hyacinths which are always moving, islands of 
them, in the southern inland waterways. 

Presently the ferryman came back for a chat and a 
smoke. We asked what kind of traffic came on the canal. 

“Maybe we’ll see a barge of sulphur passin’,” he said, 
lighting up his pipe. He went on to explain that the canal 
was built mostly as a war measure, a long water route run¬ 
ning the width of Louisiana, and across part of Texas, 
following the coast several miles inland. 

“It’s not much used for shippin’, now,” he said. “But 
it has a fine channel, nine foot deep between here and Gal¬ 
veston. When the government dredged her, there weren’t 
many people going this way, and it didn’t pay to build a 
bridge. So I got a concession to put folks over on a ferry. 
I got to supply the barge, and runnin’ expenses. But one 
of these days they have to build ’em a bridge. Traffic’s 
gettin’ heavy.” While we were there some half dozen cars 
honked for the barge, and it kept the ferryman pretty 
busy. 

During the summer we again passed by stretches of this 
long inland waterway. At one place we caught a glimpse 
of an old side-paddle-wheel boat, gliding by a moss-hung 
plantation, like a ghost from the past. 


\ 


65 


FIELDS OF SUGAR CANE AND RICE 


L EAVING South Bend we went back to U. S. 90, fol¬ 
lowing this highway to New Iberia. All of this 
country is historic, filled with the memories of the 
daring old French explorers and hunters. A detour north¬ 
ward from the main highway takes one to St. Martin- 
ville, the center of the Evangeline country. Here, on the 
banks of the Bayou Teche some of the Acadians landed 
after their expulsion, by the British, from their homeland, 
Acadia, now Nova Scotia. This is the district that Long¬ 
fellow describes when he tells the story of the heartsick 
Evangeline searching for her lover Gabriel. 

“On the banks of the Teche, are the towns of St. Maur 
and St. Martin. 

There the long-wandering bride shall be given again 
to her bridegroom, 

There the long-absent pastor regain his flock and his 
sheepfold. 

Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of 
fruit-trees; 

Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of 
heavens 

Bending above, resting its dome on the walls of the 
forest, 

They who dwell here have named it the Eden of 
Louisiana.” 


66 


As we went across Louisiana we thought of the richness 
of the land. Sugar refineries, petroleum refineries, and lum¬ 
ber-planing mills form the leading industries. In addition 
the state raises a considerable amount of cotton, sweet po¬ 
tatoes, rice, tobacco, nuts and subtropical fruits. It is espe¬ 
cially important in the fur market with muskrat, opossum, 
raccoon, and mink. 

From New Iberia we went directly west on state highway 
25 to Kaplan, but our purpose was defeated. We were turned 
back once more to 90 because the Lake Arthur district was 
flooded. 

The country through which we passed was flat prairie, 
mile after mile planted with young rice sprouts, light verdant 
green in color, growing in water spread out in thin sheets 
about the crop; miles and miles of darker green sugar cane, 
the reedlike stalks up waist high, set in thick rows, contrast¬ 
ing with the delicate green rice sprouts; and fields and fields 
of thick bushy young cotton plants in bud. 

The cereal, the sugar cane, and the fibre of cotton are as 
typical of Louisiana and as much a part of her as the Vieux 
Carre, the bayous, and the Spanish moss; the French ex¬ 
plorers and settlers, and the blatant kingfish. Today, one 
can still see the old mansions of the early plantation owners, 
moss shadowed homes, looking backward upon an epoch 
when slave owning was an accepted part of the structure of 
every well-to-do household, and when agriculture depended 
upon a system of slavery. 

Driving along the highways of Louisiana we crossed, at 
frequent intervals, the canals which irrigated the rice fields. 
They were flooded to the very lip with life-giving waters. 
The water for most of the plantations comes from streams 

67 


and wells. It is lifted by powerful pumps and distributed 
by canal to the fields. There it is spread out at an average 
depth of five inches, and held at that level by levees built 
on contour lines and forming a lovely green pattern. Some 
of the farmers own the wells and pumps, but, in most cases, 
the water is sold to them by companies for cash rental or for 
a percentage of the crop. 

Louisiana ranks first in rice production in the United 
States, harvesting a crop of 14,760,000 bushels in the year 
1933. Texas, Arkansas and California have a small acreage. 
At Abbeville, Louisiana, is the Louisiana State Rice Milling 
Company, the largest rice milling and distributing institu¬ 
tion in America. But for all the grain that can be seen grow¬ 
ing on the broad coastal plain, for all the great stretches 
of watered land covered with rice sprouts, that meet the eye 
of the traveller, the United States raises only a very small 
percentage of the world crop. 

Whereas the Irish potato, the tobacco plant and wild 
cotton are indigenous to America, and many of our other 
agricultural products are native to our soil, rice and sugar 
cane are believed to have hailed from a far-off Oriental birth¬ 
place. The grain was first imported to America by chance. 
In 1694 a ship sailing from Madagascar for Liverpool, Eng¬ 
land, was caught in a storm, nearly wrecked, and blown so 
wide of its course that it went for repairs to Charleston, 
South Carolina, then under the English flag. The captain 
of the sailing vessel made a present of some rice grains to 
the governor of the colony, and showed him how to cultivate 
it. Thus the first rice was planted in America. 

Today there is said to be a great variety of species in the 
world. Several members of three big families are grown 

68 


in the United States. Long, narrow-grained Honduras, 
hailing from Honduras and Mexico, short-grained Japanese, 
from the Japanese Empire, and medium-grained Blue Rose, 
a cross between the first two, created in Louisiana. 

Like rice, sugar cane was brought to America in colonial 
times. It was first grown in the West Indies. In 1518 it is 
reported that there were sugar mills on Santo Domingo. 
Considerably later, in 1751, the Jesuit priests sent cane and 
Negroes accustomed to its cultivation to the mainland. The 
cane was set out on a Jesuit plantation above Canal Street 
in part of what is now the second municipality of the city 
of New Orleans, but not until the end of the eighteenth 
century did American planters enter the sugar industry 
in earnest. A first successful mill was started just north 
of New Orleans in the year 1795. 

Sugar cane is a member of the grass family, a large-jointed 
stalk growing six to twelve or more feet in height. It is a 
tropical plant, but is grown with success in the sub¬ 
tropical parts of our country. The fields of cane which we 
saw in Louisiana were part of 197,000 acres planted in this 
state which has around sixty refineries operating. Several 
other southern states cultivate cane but use it primarily for 
syrup, and Louisiana does not nearly supply the demand 
of America which has recently become a nation of pop¬ 
drinking, candy-chewing, cake-eating, sweet tooths. Today, 
sugar the energy producer, which only for the last hundred 
years has been consumed by the general public, is eaten in 
immense quantities by Americans. The department of ag¬ 
riculture estimates an annual per capita consumption of 
around 100 pounds, varying some from year to year. 

But the land of sugar cane and rice, for all its interest 

69 


and charm, is not ideal summer-camping country. It really 
is hot, the mosquitoes are out in force at night, and much 
of the land is low, jungle clad, swampy. The few high¬ 
ways near the coast were shut off because of floods, and 
we were constantly forced back to highway 90, the direct 
route west into Texas. 

On the way we were advised to make camp for the 
night at Lake Charles. Arriving at the lake we found a 
beautiful, calm piece of water, completely surrounded by 
fine houses, with neat lawns, but there was no space left 
for campers. So, returning to the city of Lake Charles, 
we asked a policeman if he knew where we could pitch our 
tent. This Louisiana policeman was more interested in 
finding out what we were doing so far away from home. 
When we said that our business was painting and writing, 
he replied, “Mali aim is to write. You all will hear from 
me again, ah figure. Ah likes to keep in touch with you 
up in New York.” 

Heading west, once more, we soon put lovely Lake Charles 
behind us, and went on into Texas, our ultimate destina¬ 
tion. 


70 


Part Three 


TEXAS—THE LONE STAR 


THE LONE STAR 


T HE Sabine River divides Louisiana from the great 
state of Texas, Tejas in old Spanish style, after the 
Indian name for an Indian tribe. A ferry transports 
motorists across the boundary line on U. S. highway 90. 

On the particular sunny day in June that we reached this 
border river, it was swollen to the very edge of its banks; 
and on the far side we could see where it had but recently 
overflowed. Driftwood and silt lay upon the ground. Along 
the roadside white cranes were standing, knee deep in 
marshland, enjoying the unexpected inundation, the result 
of the trouble up-country about which we had been reading 
in the papers. Headlines were shouting: SCORES DIE IN 
TORNADOES AND FLOODS—DEATH TOLL OVER 
FIVE HUNDRED—MILLIONS OF DOLLARS PROP¬ 
ERTY DAMAGE. In Nebraska, villages were isolated, 
wiped out. In Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Missouri— 
rivers were rising, on a rampage. We had been detoured in 
Louisiana because of floods. Now Texas was sensing im¬ 
minent danger. Upstate seven people were drowned. The 
floods were sweeping onward, relentlessly. The people of 
the nation were watching, helpless, fascinated, terrified 
at the power of their rivers which tore out strong levees, 
and spread over the land, destroying. 

73 


We stopped at a small restaurant on the far banks of the 
Sabine. The waters of the river were settled in a puddle 
several inches deep upon the floor. We walked a plank 
to reach the counter. High water had left a dirty ring upon 
the wall, like a mark of warning to newcomers. 

“This place was closed down three days ago,” said the 
girl behind the counter. “The water was up fourteen inches 
in this room. We ain’t to rights yet.” 

So. The floods were come. We were in them, at least 
sitting on the edge of them, eating hamburgers from the 
vantage point of high stools, to keep our feet dry. It wor¬ 
ried us a bit at the time. The year was a bad one for floods, 
and we were in their path. But we were to find that tourists 
have little to fear from weather disasters. Inconvenienced a 
bit, maybe held up for a day or two, served hamburgers 
over puddles but not endangered. The rise and fall of 
large rivers is recorded by gauge. Automobilists are de¬ 
toured around threatening areas, forbidden to cross bridges 
where swollen streams are undermining supports. We had 
a good taste of travel within the reported flood territory; 
the country through which we had just driven, and that 
which we were about to visit, were in the general zone, but 
we found that those who heeded government warnings 
were in no danger. 

As we left the banks of the border river and started into 
the big state of Texas, it was not at once apparent that we 
were passing from one geographic region to another. State 
lines were not planned to mark geographic transitions. 
But we soon concluded that Texas was as different from 
its near neighbor Louisiana, as black is from white, politico- 
historically, geographically, economically, and racially. In 

74 


fact, it seemed at times that Texas was a different country, 
almost a kingdom in itself, and to that belief most Texans 
adhere strongly. They are bigger, better home-land boosters 
than the famed Californians. The standing joke that if you 
ask a native son if he comes from the United States, he will 
reply, “No. I’m from Texas!” is not without historic foun¬ 
dation. 

Remember, their ancestors were citizens of a free republic, 
formed just a century ago, in the year 1836 when they re¬ 
volted against Mexican rule and flew the bright lone star 
flag of freedom, symbol of independence. They stood 
alone for nine years. But the young nation had constant 
trouble with neighbor Mexico who did not admit the suc¬ 
cess of the rebellion. Early the Texans petitioned to join 
the growing United States, but the request was untimely. 
The controversy over slavery was hot in the air. Should 
the Texans hold slaves or no? During this time the federal 
government was becoming uneasy over possible European 
intervention. She didn’t want English or French fingers 
again in American pie. Finally it was agreed to annex the 
republic as a slaveholder, in the year 1845. Protection was 
promised against the Latins, and the United States, already 
on the verge of an open break with her neighbor, went to 
war with Mexico who still resented the revolt of the Texans. 

Today, the Mexican population in the state totals 683,681 
as against 4,283,491 whites. In Spanish colonial days a 
belated effort was made to settle this far northern state 
with Latins; but during the period of American expansion, 
the Latins were soon outnumbered. The census shows 
854,964 Negroes. 

Texas is a very large place. The amount of territory 

75 


contained within its borders is amazing. To say that it is 
the largest state in the Union, to say that it covers 265,896 
square miles, does not adequately convey a sense of its size. 
A motor trip from the northern border to Galveston on 
the coast, gives some idea of how big it really is. The dis¬ 
tance, as the crow flies, is 760 miles. You could put all of 
the New England States into Texas four times over and 
still have a couple of hundred square miles to spare. Before 
the abolition of slavery in the United States, the advocates 
of the question cherished a fond hope that big Texas might 
be divided into several smaller parts, each of which would 
be slaveholding as was the mother state. But the proposi¬ 
tion did not bear fruit. Texas has remained intact. 

The agriculture of this section of the country surprises 
many a traveller, imbued with the wild west sagas of movie 
and book. The cotton plantations are tremendous. A thriv¬ 
ing citrus-fruit industry is being developed in the palm- 
lined valley of the lower Rio Grande. Today, Texas is the 
leading cotton-growing state in the Union; it harvested 
11,467,000 acres in 1933. She is also rich in mineral re¬ 
sources, ranking first in value of mineral products (oil 
included). 

The world-famed native son is the cowboy, the long- 
limbed, raw-boned, leather-chapped, hard-riding cow 
puncher, pounding the guts out of broncos, riding from 
here to kingdom come to round up “longhorns” on the 
free, wide-open, unfenced prairie. The ranches are large 
in Texas. She holds first place in cattle raising, but things 
are different from the old, wild-west ways. The land is 
fenced. Only a few longhorns remain, like ghosts of a 
former age. The breed has changed, given way to white 

7 6 





apwm 


MU} HiiAUh 


We came upon Port Arthur, looking li\e a 
modernistic setting for a machine-age play. 
On the far side is the Gulf oil refinery. 































faced Herefords, shorthorns, Aberdeen-Angus, all of British 
origin, adapted to the great beef areas of the plains. Here 
and there in the South the hump shouldered Brahman cattle 
may be seen near the roadside, foreign-looking animals 
for the western range. They were first imported from 
India in 1906, thirty Brahman bulls and three Brahman 
cows. None of the British beef are suited to the Gulf coast 
area. The climate disagrees with them, the native vegeta¬ 
tion is too low in food value. Some successful cross breed¬ 
ing has been done, producing a three-eighths Brahman, five- 
eighths, shorthorn. Good cattle for the coast. When a 
quarantine prevented further importation from India, some 
Africanders from Africa were introduced to try the Gulf 
air and feed. 

As for scenery and climate, the variety in Texas is un¬ 
limited—most agreeable. Vast, semi-desert plains give way 
to mountains, to cactus and mesquite desert, to rich, tropical 
delta land, and to long, sand-swept beaches. 

A short distance beyond the Sabine we came to the Neches 
River. There, a free ferry put us across, and soon, in the 
flatness, we came upon Port Arthur, looking like a modern¬ 
istic setting for a machine-age play. The town itself is low 
built, and edged with little grey houses. But on the far 
side is the Gulf oil refinery, said to be the largest refinery 
in the world. The town seems but a fringe to the maze of 
paraphernalia for cracking crude oil. Smoke stacks belch 
darkly. Out of the plant come gutters full of black, oily 
refuse. The air is heavy with sulphur. At the docks on 
Sabine Lake we could see big ship tankers filling up, pre¬ 
paratory to steaming out into the waters of the Gulf by way 
of Sabine Pass, thence to other ports. 

79 


MOSQUITOES 


B EYOND Port Arthur we hoped to strike the ocean, 
to find a long, sandy beach and good swimming, 
to wash from ourselves the dust of the hot, inland 
journey. Port Arthur itself is on Sabine Lake, an inlet of 
the ocean. A short distance further, at Sabine Pass, lies 
the open Gulf. On the map, a road by-the-sea was marked 
to High Island, and onward over a glorious stretch of beach 
ways, down to the very tip end of Texas—sand—swimming 
—fishing—and no end of fun. But at Port Arthur our 
hopes were somewhat blasted. There we were told that 
the road from the Pass to High Island was no more. 

“Hurricane wiped her out two years ago,” the gas station 
attendant informed us. First, floods. Now hurricanes. Na¬ 
ture tearing up the land, the highways, chasing people out 
of their homes, spreading destruction. What next? 

The alternative route was by way of Beaumont, thence 
by Houston to Galveston—all inland—a long way around. 

“But can’t we make it by way of High Island? We don’t 
mind a rough road,” we said to the gas attendant. 

“Some cars go through,” he admitted. “But there’s no 
road. They drive the open beach.” 

We had seen pictures in the movietone news of the auto 
racers on the sands at Daytona, Florida. The open beach, 

80 


it would be. It was already dusk when we started down 
the road, through flat marsh land. A fresh coastal breeze, 
salt tinged, blew steadily on our faces, luring us onward. 
Part way we drew up at a gas station for a bottle of pop. 
No sooner had we stopped than we were beset by mosquitoes, 
not one or two, but swarms. They settled in a cloud, lit 
upon our ears, our legs, our arms, bit through the very 
cloth of our shirts. 

“Come inside,” said the gas man. “Mosquitoes are bad 
tonight. It’s them floods what breeds ’em.” 

We hurried inside the restaurant which was screened, 
but the mosquitoes went in too. They were singing around, 
great, saltmarsh fellows with long legs and long stingers. 
The proprietor was idling with a can of Flit, flitting the ceil¬ 
ing, windows and customers’ legs, filling the room with an 
acrid odor, but holding the insects at bay. 

“Are the mosquitoes like this on the beach?” we asked. 

“You won’t be bothered none down there,” he said, 
squirting at us amiably with the Flit gun. “Unless—” he 
added, “—unless there’s a land breeze. Then—the Lord 
help you.” 

We went on our way in the darkness. All about us were 
stretches of salt marsh land, good mosquito land. Suddenly 
a tire wheezed flat beneath us, and we found that the 
mosquitoes were still with us, in droves. 

At last we reached Sabine Pass, came out upon the open 
Gulf where the road ended abruptly on a lovely, clean sea 
beach, shining in the starlight, hard packed sand, easy to 
drive on. Here it was quite different from the muddy coast 
of Louisiana. 

Refreshed by the sight of the ocean, we determined to 

81 


camp then and there, camp and swim. Stopping the car, 
we commenced to set up poles and tent. Immediately we 
were struck by a heavy pelting rain, not of water but of 
mosquitoes. They came in clouds, hitting with blind bodies 
against us, turning their stingers instantly into action. The 
whole world seemed to dissolve into a pelting horde of 
insects, a black nightmare of stinging insects, in which, it 
seemed, no human could survive. We swatted and swore 
but found retreat the better part of valor. We fled to the 
car, leaving our tent flapping dejectedly in the wind, half 
up, half down. We pulled the mosquito bar hurriedly down 
over the auto top, tucked it carefully in on all sides. There 
we sat, like caged monkeys, while on the leeward gathered 
the mosquitoes in black clouds, literally thousands of them, 
piling one upon the other and crawling in by some mysteri¬ 
ous manner underneath the netting. Historians say that 
the coastal Indians used to anoint their bodies with the 
oil of shark or alligator, making themselves smell badly to 
keep away the creatures. Would anything be effective against 
these hordes ? They crawled in and set upon us like fiends, 
and made our first night in Texas miserable, unpropitious. 
The patron saint of travel had deserted us for the mo¬ 
ment. 

Without more ado we pulled off the net, snatched up our 
drooping tent, set off backtracking towards Port Arthur, 
thirty-five miles away. Of course by this time it was quite 
late. In fact it was past two o’clock when we reached the 
Port. The town was fast asleep. The sight was very dis¬ 
couraging. We went to a tourist camp, banged upon the 
inhospitable looking door, but no amount of banging 
aroused the proprietor. We drove away, and immediately 

82 


there was a loud report under our car. A second tire gone 
flat. It set us down in the night, as it were, stranded. We had 
no spare tire, no tire repair outfit. There was nothing to 
be done but to pull up into the yard of a gas station, spread 
our net over the car, and wait for the remainder of the night 
to wear away. Fortunately the mosquitoes were scarce in 
town, only a few hummed lazily outside. We dozed. 

With the coming of the dawn a gruff voice awakened us. 
A hand lifted one side of the net and flashed a silver star 
into our sleepy eyes. 

“What are you doing here?” asked the sheriff. 

We explained that we were waiting for repairs. We were 
stiff, sore and much bitten, weary with sleeplessness. We 
itched on all sides at once and above and below. 

At length, about seven o’clock the proprietor appeared. 
Our tires mended, we drove off once more for Sabine Pass. 
By this time we knew something about the habits of mos¬ 
quitoes. We felt reasonably sure that the beach would now 
be free of them. With the coming of the sun they would 
drift back into the shelter of the salt grass to hide. At 
least that’s the way most of the Louisiana mosquitoes had 
behaved. On our return trip we saw great stretches of this 
marsh grass set on fire by man, burning like a prairie fire, 
roasting the pests. 

The sun was shining brightly over the Gulf, and just as 
we had surmised, the beach was serene, deserted—not a 
sign of a mosquito for miles in any direction, just as if our 
experience of the previous night had never been. All, a 
bad dream. But our swollen legs, our itching skin told a 
different story. We were broken out with red lumps. 

We got immediately into our bathing suits, and plunged 

83 


into the water which was cool, refreshing, soothing, in spite 
of the fact that at this particular point it was filled with 
mud from the floods up country, mud and bits of oil refuse 
from the refineries. We swam and sun bathed, lying on 
the sand, luxuriating in water and air. It felt so good. We 
lingered on and on, and when we finally set off down 
the beach, we were still in bathing suits. Again and again 
we stopped to wade and explore like beach combers. The 
sight of mile after mile of clear coast, uninhabited, untrav¬ 
elled, was refreshing to our Eastern eyes, used to crowded 
scenes. Here we were, the sole proprietors of colorful shells, 
all sorts of driftwood, carved beams, sea-whitened, broken 
from some wrecked ship; huge wicker fruit baskets from 
the neighboring tropics, sea weed, coconuts—all sorts of 
things of interest—jelly fish, flying gulls, running crabs. 

The sand near the water’s edge was packed hard. It 
made a fine speedway. Above us, on the edge of the salt 
marshes, was what remained of the road—a few broken 
chunks of tar, the foundation ripped and torn out as if by 
the teeth of some angry animal. It was borne in upon our 
attention that this same sea which lay gently lapping, turn¬ 
ing an easy surf onto the shore, was capable of terrific 
things. 

That night we camped at Galveston where we spent four 
days resting from the attacks of mosquito and sunbeams. 
Our skin, besides being well bitten, was well burned. We 
had scarlet arms and legs, backs and noses threatening to 
blister. Our skin became a sore welter of small bubbles 
which soon peeled. Thereafter we accustomed our bodies 
slowly to the climate, took short sun baths until hardened. 

84 


As for mosquitoes, we were never again bothered on the 
coast. The old timers repeated the warning—“If there’s 
a land breeze, Lord help you.” But the wind blew mercifully 
from the Gulf. 


85 


GALVESTON 


G ALVESTON has one of the largest pleasure beaches 
in the world. For people who come suddenly 
upon it out of the dry inland, the clean sandy 
vista of the beach stretching away farther than the eye 
can see, is a delightful sight. Off the Gulf comes the soft 
cool breath of the trade winds, blowing strongly from mid¬ 
afternoon till after dark. No matter how high the tem¬ 
perature may be (and it gets very hot in southern Texas), 
the trade winds cool the air. The change from the torrid 
inland climate where the heat lies sticky upon the land, 
is amazing. 

The island of Galveston is thirty-two miles long. It is 
reached by a long bridge or by ferry. The city has a popula¬ 
tion of over 50,000, but aside from the city and three gov¬ 
ernment fortifications, there are no other settlements on the 
island. The business district spreads out with a haphazard 
and rather ugly type of architecture, but the streets are 
wide and palm lined, giving the place an air of richness. 

Galveston has a good harbor. It exports great quantities 
of grain, has the nation’s largest export grain elevator with 
a capacity of 6,000,000 bushels, handles an immense amount 
of cotton, and is the world’s biggest sulphur port. There 

86 


are thirty-seven piers for water traffic. Big pleasure cruisers 
go and come from Miami and New York. A section of 
the docks is given over to a quaint fish market where 
floating barges form stores. You can buy wholesale or 
retail—shrimp, red snappers that look like overgrown gold 
fish, speckled sea trout, and all sea food in season. The fish 
are sold over small counters erected on barges. The pur¬ 
chases are weighed in small scales and passed out to cus¬ 
tomers in newspaper wrappings. Sometimes the old fisher¬ 
men’s wives do the trading. 

On the ocean side of the city are the hotels. Dance and 
eating pavilions shadow the broad boulevard that runs paral¬ 
lel to the water’s edge, high above the level of the beach, 
back of a wall which rises like a giant blockade, strong and 
wide and thick, ready to withhold the power of the sea 
when it breaks loose and pours great angry tidal waves 
towards the city, when tropical hurricanes sweep over the 
island from time to time. The sea wall is an immense en¬ 
gineering achievement, constructed at a cost of approxi¬ 
mately J> 14,000,000. It is seventeen feet high and sixteen 
feet wide at the base, slanting to a width of five feet at 
the top. This bulwark rises to face the Gulf for a dis¬ 
tance of seven and one-half miles. The beach itself is 
wide and packed so hard by surf that it makes a fine auto 
speedway. It is also used for cycling, horseback riding, 
and for all kinds of play. On weekdays the resort is often 
rather deserted, but on weekends, or holidays, it is a gala 
sight. When the oleanders are in bloom there is a festival 
with fireworks, parades, and carnival. The oleander shrub 
grows luxuriantly on the island—twenty-eight varieties 
of the flower with fourteen different colored blooms. Crawl- 

87 


ing in like ants come the cars of the Texans, to celebrate, 
so many cars that the approach for miles out into the country 
is congested like the Boston Post road. Hundreds of holiday 
makers crowd the way until it seems as if the whole popu¬ 
lation of Texas were pouring into a metal stream, with one 
destination, the ocean. They drive right down onto the sand 
and spread out like a big gypsy caravan, a crowd that would 
at first sight seem to threaten to turn the place into an over¬ 
sized Coney Island. But Galveston really has little in com¬ 
mon with the eastern island. True to beach form, there are 
many hot-dog stands, beer and pop joints and amusement 
halls, but the place is so spacious that the outdoor spirit is 
not overpowered by the pleasure stalls; and, because of the 
danger of tidal waves, most of the dance halls and shooting 
galleries have been constructed back of the sea-wall. The 
hot-dog stands on the beach are of a transient nature. They 
are all built on wheels and are ready to dash away like so 
many frightened rabbits at the approach of a storm. Some 
of them are automobile trailers with a restaurant complete 
within the car. These settle themselves at odd intervals, for 
five or more miles up and down the sands. The better class 
places set up tables, shaded by palm-thatched roofs. A few, 
more permanent structures cluster about the bath-houses 
which are built like long-legged, crazy-colored bugs, on stilt 
legs to permit the water to wash beneath them. A large dance 
hall is built on the same principle. Some small structures 
that at first glance appear to be permanent, turn out, upon 
close inspection, to be ready to flee at short notice. Under 
them are concealed wheels. At a warning from the coast 
guard, horses and cars come down out of the town and drag 
the whole business to safety up behind the sea wall, leaving 

88 


the beach staring vacant to await the hungry tongue of the 
sea. 

In keeping with the transient nature of the hot-dog stands, 
are the people. Although they cluster thickly in one place, 
like bees at flowers, about the eating stands, devouring gal¬ 
lons and gallons of pop and beer, and tons of hamburger, 
and mile upon mile of hot-dogs—they are constantly scatter¬ 
ing outward over the distant sands. So although the central 
public beach is, at holiday times, a madhouse of racing cars, 
bicycles, horses and people, there is room for the quietly in¬ 
clined person to retire to lonely parts. The beach is so long 
that it overwhelms and dwarfs the amusement halls. There 
is no need to erect signs forbidding ball playing or other 
sports, as is often done at Atlantic resorts. Tanned men in 
trunks toss balls to each other, running up and down, and 
leaping. There is plenty of room for leaping. Pretty girls 
dressed in gay colored pajamas speed up and down the hard 
sands on bicycles. Groups ride by on horseback, splashing the 
edge of the water. A continuous stream of bathers of all sizes, 
shapes, colors and ages plays about in the low easy surf, sport¬ 
ing with the white breakers, bounding forward and spring¬ 
ing at the waves, and retreating. Some few swim far out 
until only a dot remains to tell that they are people. The 
greater part dally about on the lip of the ocean like flies upon 
the rim of a cup, dabbling their feet and splashing them¬ 
selves gingerly. A large black mammy in a screaming red 
suit dips a blond baby girl up and down in the water. Near 
by is an elderly man with a large belly, draped in a drawer¬ 
like suit resurrected from some dusty attic. New arrivals 
stand out white and naked looking beside the bronzed 
figures of those who have been on holiday for some time, 

89 


and a few are bright scarlet all over their bodies, as we were, 
with too quick and sudden exposure to the hot sun of the 
Gulf. These latter can usually be seen rubbing on various 
and sundry oils until they glisten and shine like raw beef. 

After dark the medley of cars continues to dash danger¬ 
ously about, black shapes with bright eyes lighting up with 
sudden search torches, spotting groups of bathers who con¬ 
tinue for hours after dark to go out into the water. Often, 
then, the stark element of tragedy strikes for an instant, like 
the head of a poisonous snake, snatching away one of the 
playful figures in death. The place is well patrolled, but 
when the oleander festival is on, or the Fourth of July has 
come with all of its attendant noise and carousing, tragedy 
sometimes comes also. So it was one night when we slept on 
the beach. Two things happened. One was but a false 
alarm. 

Suddenly in the midst of the merry-making, the voice of 
the machine age spoke, the radio voice said: “There is a 
little girl lost in the Gulf of Mexico. Mary Louise Turner. 
Anyone knowing the whereabouts of this little girl, report 
at once to the radio car.” The voice went droning on, up 
and down, up and down the beach, repeating the seemingly 
inane message about a small girl lost in the Gulf of Mexico, 
a rather formidable place to be lost in. The crowd, arrested 
in the midst of pleasure by the voice, at first thought they 
were being made sport of; then perceiving the seriousness 
of the situation, turned in a group to the edge of the sea, and 
stared with one eye out into the gleaming darkness. The car 
went on and on, presently asking that the body of the girl 
be searched for. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was 
over. The little girl came running out of somewhere. She 


90 



Most of the bathers dally about on the lip of 
the ocean li\e flies upon the rim of a cup. 


HSMSPJ 



















was lost, but not drowned, she explained. Soon she was safe 
again in the arms of her family, and the crowd sighed 
happily, went back to the hot-dog stands, and to play. But 
scarcely had this excitement died down when the piercing 
shriek of a siren silenced the shouting. An ambulance bore 
down among them, screaming like a lost soul. The machine 
drove to the far end of the beach. 

“They had a collision,” explained someone. “Two cars. 
One woman was killed. Had her neck broke,” said the in¬ 
former, his eyes bulging with excitement. 

While the ambulance bore the body back up the sea wall 
there was a moment’s pause and speculation. The tragedy 
soured like vinegar, the joy in everyone was gone. They 
stared at the retreating ambulance, and then gradually, as 
its wail died off in the distance, they resumed their banter 
and spread out once more in playful groups. 

In the dawn hours they lay exhausted—spread out upon 
the ground like dogs, tired from play. There were fewer 
people. Many had gone up to the town to sleep in hotels 
or apartments. Some had rented the high built bath-houses. 
But the herd, the masses, flopped down unconcerned, to 
sleep under the stars, some on folding cots, some on mere 
blankets. Others crawled away into little tents that had 
sprung up mysteriously like mushrooms. Some few spent 
the night luxuriously in trailers fitted out like de luxe hotel 
rooms with running water, kitchens, closets, ice chests, all 
the comforts of home; and still others lay humped like rag 
dolls in various uncomfortable positions in their cars. There 
was no noise now but the soft lapping surf, remembering the 
ghosts of six nations, the Indian, the French, the Spanish, 
the Mexican, the Texan, the American, that had in turn 


93 


claimed the island. The ghosts of the dark faced Karanka- 
wan Indians, the French discoverer La Salle, the succeeding 
Spanish Count Bernado de Galvez, governor general of the 
Spanish province of Louisiana, Galvez in whose illustrious 
honor the island was named; and the dim, exciting memory 
of one Jean Lafitte, gentleman, privateer, smuggler, pirate 
of the Gulf, that same gentleman whom we have just heard 
of in New Orleans where his memory shines strongly. After 
the close of the War of 1812 when he acquitted himself so 
nobly, he arrived from Barataria Bay with forty followers 
and became for a brief period, Lord of Galveston Island in 
his own right. This was during the time when the northern 
provinces of Mexico were still under the remote control of 
old Spain, with revolt under way. In April, 1817, the free¬ 
booters established a government with the express object of 
“capturing Spanish property under what they called the 
Mexican flag, but without an idea of aiding the revolution 
in Mexico, or that of any of the Spanish revolted colonies.” 
They were taking advantage of a period of political unrest 
and revolution. To make it all legal they elected a governor 
and adjutant commandant, a judge of the admiralty, a sec¬ 
retary of treasury, a notary public, and, ironically enough, 
a collector of customs! They took oath to the Mexican 
Republic (about to be) and had the governor sworn in by 
Luis Iturribarria. Lafitte erected a fort, named his little 
settlement Campeachy. It soon became a refuge for free¬ 
booters. It is said that they nearly swept Spanish commerce 
from the seas. Jean Lafitte always maintained that he was 
an honorable man, preying only upon Spanish ships, the 
ships of the country against which he harbored a righteous 
grudge. 


94 


The story is this: In the early days of his career, Jean was 
an honest merchant of Santo Domingo. Selling his property, 
he sailed for Europe with a large cargo in the hold of his 
ship. A week at sea, he was set upon and captured by a 
Spanish man-of-war, robbed, cast aside upon a barren sand 
key with his wife and crew. They were provisioned for a few 
days only. As luck would have it, an American schooner 
came by and rescued the marooned people, taking them to 
New Orleans where Mrs. Lafitte died of fever. Thereafter, 
Jean conceived a profitable idea of revenge, preying upon 
Spanish ships upon the seas, only upon Spanish ships. While 
at Galveston he was willing to go a long way to prove his 
devotion to the Union. One of his followers, a pirate named 
Brown, robbed an American vessel near the Sabine river— 
escaped to the freebooters’ haven at Galveston, where Lafitte 
greeted him with a hangman’s noose! That was the end of 
Brown and the United States was given clear proof that 
gentleman Lafitte was American in sympathy. But the very 
next year, 1821, another vessel was taken by one of Lafitte’s 
ships. The federal government, fearing for American com¬ 
merce, sent Lieutenant Kearney with a man-of-war to break 
up the stronghold on the island. Kearney reported that 
he was hospitably received by Lafitte, prevailed upon 
him to disband his men, destroy his fort, and leave the 
island. 

Lafitte himself sailed away on his favorite ship, the Pride, 
sailed away into the unknown leaving behind him a host of 
legends, a quantity of buried treasure (legendary), on Gal¬ 
veston Island, at Port Lavaca, and yet further south, on 
desert Padre Island, a fortune of pirate treasure which men 
have been madly digging for ever since. Legends grow. 


95 


Already on Galveston there is a hotel named after Lafitte, 
and down the beach a small grove of trees known as La- 
fitte’s grove, marks the place where the famous man buried 
loot, so they say. 


96 


TO CORPUS 


T HE road from Galveston to Corpus Christi led in¬ 
land parallel to the Gulf, occasionally crossing bays 
and inlets of the sea where little fishing villages 
had sprung up, Palacios, Rockport, Port Lavaca near where 
La Salle established an ill fated colony in 1687. The land 
was mostly open, some areas swampy and filled with a 
heavy, semi-tropical growth, big trees hung with Spanish 
moss, much like the bayous of Louisiana; other places, dry 
as the desert, with a growth of mesquite, opuntia cactus, 
and tree yuccas. Varied land of Texas. At Rockport the 
trees were lovely, like those of Japan—small oaks, storm 
shaped into twisted forms. 

The Brazos river, one of the larger rivers in the state, was 
sunk back within its banks but sullenly rolling. The country¬ 
side showed evidence of recent overflow. There was silt 
on the highway which a few days before had been buried 
under water. The body of an alligator, three feet long, lay 
dead upon the roadside. There were several dead arma¬ 
dillos. The houses near the river were badly flooded. 

The high flat stretches of land between the swamps were 
planted in immense farms of cotton and sorghum. Texas 
leads the states in the production of both these crops. 
Sorghum is valuable both as grain and forage. The center 

97 


of heaviest production has been in the northwest of Texas, 
but of late considerable acreage on the Gulf coast has been 
given to this crop. The fields are beautiful. In July the 
heads fill out, and as far as the eye can see the fields spread 
out with the ripening grain heads. At certain angles they 
break up into rows, speeding straight out into the distance. 
The stalks are planted close together in long, thick lines. 

The sorghums have a far-off birthplace. Some varieties 
grown in Texas are the feteritas and hegari from the Sudan 
region of Africa; the milos, place of origin unknown; shallu 
from India; two hybrids chiltex and darso, the koaliangs 
from China, and the kafirs. The red kafir when just ripening 
is a gorgeous sight. The seed is red and has a reddish husk 
that becomes straw colored at harvest time. A big field of 
this grain is like molten copper. 

Sixty million bushels annually come from the fields in 
Texas. It is valued third among her crops. 

We drove into Corpus Christi expecting to find a water 
front town, sweltering, semi-tropical, malaria infested. What 
we found was a well planned, well laid out city, with a good 
sea front, a boulevard lined with newly planted palms. A 
busy metropolis, built upward from the bay. The residential 
section favors Spanish type architecture, the clean stucco 
houses gleaming in the sunlight. Hot, it was, but not swel¬ 
tering. The Gulf breeze drifted in over the islands which 
lay about six miles off shore, curving like dogs asleep on the 
far side of the bay. 

The map indicated that we could reach Padre Island by 
a bridge from a place fifteen miles south of Corpus. We 
verified the information at a gas station. The attendant said, 
“Sure. There’s a fine causeway bridge to Padre, and there’s 

98 


a hotel on the island where you can put up.” Not that we 
wanted a hotel. 

All that we had to do was to drive for fifteen miles south 
and we would come to it. “Just follow the bay.” We took 
the palm boulevard out of Corpus. The Texan islands which 
had seemed so remote, so unapproachable, were just across 
the bay. 

Presently we came upon the causeway which jutted out 
over the water, but, strangely enough, it stopped before it 
reached Padre. On the mainland there was a small restau¬ 
rant, a small cafe with one lonely, weather beaten palm be¬ 
side it, but the place seemed quite deserted, not at all like 
the approach to a prosperous bridge. We went inside the 
cafe, where, upon a stool, sat a cross-eyed, peg-legged old 
seaman. A young girl behind the counter answered our 
questions in one sentence. “That bridge ain’t been in since 
the last hurricane two years ago!” 

We could scarcely believe that the bridge was out, but it 
was. The young girl fetched her father who was a sea cap¬ 
tain. He confirmed the news, and gave his version of how 
to get to Padre. “By ferry,” he said, “ferry from Aransas 
Pass.” The place was about twenty-five miles the other side 
of Corpus, back on the road we had come upon! The ferry 
would land us on Mustang, and it was probable that we could 
get from there to Padre. 

It was now dusk. On the muddy shore of Laguna Madre 
we set up our tent, among some rickety fishermen’s shacks, 
planning to retrace our steps in the morning. While we 
cooked our dinner there was much to watch, great activity 
among birds and men centered about the water’s edge. Both 
were getting their living from the sea. Just off shore a long 

99 



legged grey crane stood up to his knees in water, fishing. He 
held his neck extended at a queer angle. Ever so often he 
would change the position of his neck, and bend his legs at 
the knee, all the while staring fixedly at the water. Presently 
he made a thrust with his bill, brought up a big fish. With 
a twisting motion he swallowed it whole, down his long 
neck. He then resumed his fishing just as if he hadn’t had 
a good meal. 

As darkness came, fishermen returned with their day’s 
catch, docked their small boats, unloaded kegs of fish. The 
old peg-legged fellow kicked the barrels down the wharf 
with his wooden leg. 

In the morning, at Aransas Pass, we phoned the coast 
guard. The report was that none of the fellows had been 
down the length of Padre in two years, since the hurricane 
(everything seemed to be since, before, or after the hurri¬ 
cane)—but we could probably make it. At the southern 
end, opposite Port Isabel, a barge could be hailed to put us 
back to the mainland. 

A six-mile causeway led to the ferry at Harbor Island. 
The causeway was narrow, the highway and railroad run¬ 
ning on the same bed. It was one way passage out across 
the calm waters of the bay. On either side, pipe lines ran out 
to the big gas tanks on Harbor Island which shone like sil¬ 
ver, great storage drums painted brightly with aluminum 
paint. The ferry Mitzi awaited us, a small transport made to 
hold four cars. Later in the summer a big new-painted ferry 
appeared to run the vacation people, but now the customers 
were few in number. As we waited for Mitzi to start, we 
looked out over the channel, and in the waters there was a 
whole school of porpoises. There is nothing more amusing 


ioo 




We looked out over the channel, and in the 
waters there was a whole school of porpoises. 



















to watch than these big fish. First one would rise and curve 
his dark grey back half out of water, making a beautiful 
shining flash above the surface, and then he would be gone, 
deep down under the bay to reappear a few seconds later, 
often in the very same spot. Then two fish would swim 
across the channel together—appearing and disappearing, 
and making a fine sport out of swimming. They looked to 
be all of six feet long. Porpoises are big fish, but unlike 
sharks, they are harmless. They never bite anyone’s leg off. 
The fishermen believe that the porpoise is a friend to man, 
and there is a myth told among fisherfolk that if a porpoise 
sees a person drowning he will swim down under him and 
with the blunt end of his nose, gently shove the unfortunate 
fellow to shore. 

The abundance of fish in the waters of the Gulf is much 
heralded. A sentence embroidered in red yarn on the back 
of workmen’s shirts says, “They bite every day at Port 
Aransas.” This sign and the porpoises foretold a quantity 
of fish. The three cars besides ours on the ferry were owned 
by sportsmen. Long bamboo poles were tied gayly to the 
tops of their autos. A holiday air prevailed. We asked the 
men what fish they would catch. “Reds,” they said. “Reds 
and sea trout and whitings. Out by the jetties there’s the 
best tarpon grounds in the world. Plenty of mackerel and 
kingfish too.” 

“Who owns Padre?” we asked the husky young ferryman. 

“I dunno. I’m from Ioway,” he said. “Been here only three 
months and don’t get off the boat much.” 

“Is there a road down Padre?” 

“There ain’t no road there,” he said. “But I heard tell you 
can drive down on the beach. They’ve just been dumpin’ 


103 


cattle off down there. Old man Dunn runs ’em.” We let it 
go at that, determined to have at least a look at the old desert 
island where the cattle had just been “dumped.” 

Behind us was a big empty oil tanker, an old black and 
red tramp—coming in at the docks of the Atlantic and 
Humble oil companies. Ahead of us was the port, a cluster 
of houses set about the life springs of the village—the harbor 
and the docks—where the small boats of the place bobbed 
up and down as the ferry glided in making a swell on the 
level water. The gang plank at the landing ran up between 
grey wharves, past a jumble of small water front cafes and 
cottages. 

We put the village immediately behind us, made for the 
Gulf side of the island, drove past a fishing jetty, and en¬ 
quired about the “road.” 

“They all drives the beach here,” said the fisherman. 
“Keep close to the water. Dry sand is bad. You can make it 
good, now, at low tide.” 


104 


THE ISLANDS 


W E drove out onto the beach of Mustang just as 
at Galveston and at Sabine Pass. The sand was 
packed damp and firm like a racing speedway. 
The beach was remarkably clean but just on the edge of the 
surf there were scattered driftwood logs, some of them whole 
trees extending wooden arms up towards the shore, and 
some pitched high and dry, old logs and ships’ skeletons 
turning bone white by the dunes, evidence of some forgotten 
storm. Driving fast along the tide’s edge it was necessary to 
dodge in and out among the driftwood, and at the same time 
avoid the swish of the waves that licked up toward the car. 
Now and then we did not time the flow of the water cor¬ 
rectly; then we would hit a swell full on the head end of 
our car, and send spray clean over the top of us, so that for 
a moment we would lose all sense of direction, and seem to 
be driving straight seaward, and it was more like driving a 
motor boat than a car. Soon the long pier faded into the 
distance, and we had nothing to the left of us but the green 
waters of the Gulf breaking into white froth on the sands, 
and nothing to the right of us but the wide beach running 
back to high dunes, green tufted with marsh grass, with not 
a tree in sight, nor a house, nor a person, and nothing in 
front of us but the run of the hard beach and the sea gulls 

105 


flying like couriers before us, scouring the tide’s edge for 
scavengers’ loot, dead fish, sea garbage. For fifteen miles 
we drove and then we came upon a small group of tents 
which perched on the dry sand where the island came to an 
end. Mustang Island stopped abruptly with a turn and there 
was Corpus Pass, a small dark reach of water running with¬ 
out surf between the two islands. Padre lay ahead of us, a 
great desert setting, wild and unclaimed. We drove up to 
the largest tent, a fine affair with a big canopy fixed over a 
long dining table, and a sign with the name of the place on 
it, for this fine group of campers had a name, the Sand Crab 
Club. Sand Crab Club members were at dinner, about a 
dozen of them, men and women, with a Negro chef serv¬ 
ing up the chow. They were camping de luxe. We en¬ 
quired how to get to Padre, and one of the Sand Crabs said, 
“Blow your horn. The ferryman lives over yonder on the 
lee side of Padre.” 

Looking over the dark pass we saw a small group of fisher¬ 
men’s shacks, clinging to the beach side like a bunch of 
barnacles, grey and sea washed. We blew our horn and the 
wind being in the right direction, the ferryman heard us 
and presently we saw him coming out of his grey shack, and 
getting into an old ramshackly car and starting down to 
where the ferry was moored. It was a small ferry, just a 
raft with space for one car, the most primitive kind of trans¬ 
port imaginable. The ferryman got on board and loosed 
the thing from its moorings, and plucking up a wire cable 
which lay across the bottom of the pass, he pulled with over¬ 
hand motions, holding the ferry up against the tide by sheer 
strength of muscle. Suddenly it seemed as if we had come to 
the marginal border of the machine age in America. The 

106 


main livelihood of this fellow depended upon the muscle 
in his arm, and only the outline of his shambly car declared 
that the metal arm of the machine had reached out to the 
far southern end of the country, and had laid its hand upon 
the people, however lightly. 

The ferryman came in slowly, beached the front end of 
the ferry, and stepping off waist deep into the water, set 
out two runways for our wheels. He was a young fellow 
with a tough, hard body clothed only in a faded blue shirt 
and in shorts made of old blue overalls. We asked him if 
we could run the whole length of Padre. He answered us 
slowly, drawling, as if time for him were of no importance, 
and merely a thing that visitors tried to thrust upon him. 

“I bin only thirty mile myself,” he said. “I guess you can 
make it all right, but the big shell, down thirty mile, is bad, 
like quicksand. You gotta watch it down yonder—you’ll 
know the shell by the steepness of the banks.” 

We drove up onto the ferry, and the fellow pulled us on 
across to Padre, and then he got into his shambly car, all 
rusted from stern to prow with the salt air and water. He 
went round the beach a few miles to where there was yet 
another inlet of the ocean. A second hand-pulled ferry 
waited at anchor. When we were landed on the far side of 
this pass, the ferryman asked, “Do you want me to be 
acomin’ back for you?” 

We said no, we intended to go to Port Isabel, and so with¬ 
out further comment he put back across the pass and left us 
alone upon our island, and how alone we were. There was 
not a human-looking thing in sight. As we set off down the 
beach way there were only the sand crabs which infest the 
Texas islands by the thousands, and the Portuguese men-of- 

107 


war, sailing in over the surf, stranded by the hundreds after 
high tide, making the way sprinkled with a coronet of 
jewels, iridescent purple and blue shining bodies, and the 
gulls. On our left was the deep, unfathomable gulf water 
with all its multitude of strange sea life swimming and float¬ 
ing and swaying beneath the surface—and on our right the 
sand dunes, covering all that was and had been—the history 
of the place was smothered in the sands. Or so it seemed to 
us, as we drove along mile after mile, mile after mile. 

Under these tons of sand, somewhere, was a Spanish ship, 
its hold full of plate, lost, so legend says, during a storm, 
and swept up onto Padre. 

We saw, here and there, traces of the cattle belonging to 
old man Dunn, but the animals themselves stayed off to the 
lee of the dunes. As for the hotel that the gas attendant had 
mentioned, there didn’t seem to be even a ghost of one. 

We kept track of the distance on our speedometer, watch¬ 
ing for the big shell. The tide was not going out as fast as 
we hoped. It kept us running pretty close up on the dry 
sand, and we had had enough experience driving in the 
Arizona desert to know that deep dry sand is no joke to put 
a car through. Suddenly, when the speedometer turned to 
forty we were in the shell. The beach shelved off abruptly 
into the water, instead of sloping gradually under the surf 
swell. The sand gave way to masses of cracked shell. We 
could no longer run next to the water’s edge. The steep 
bank gave us no alternative. We had to drive right in the 
ocean where our engine would soon drown, or retreat up 
onto dry ground. If the tide had been out a bit further we 
might have made it, but as it was we had to leave the tide’s 
edge. For a few moments our wheels churned and we drove 

108 


onward about fifty yards. Then we sunk, quickly and deeply 
up to our hubs. 

We looked ahead and the banks were before us as far as 
we could see. In the meantime the clouds which had been 
hanging on the rim of the Gulf had risen up over our heads 
and spread like a dark curtain, black and angry looking, 
shutting out the sun entirely. The wind gradually whipped 
itself into a fury. This had happened so quickly that we 
were not aware of the change until it had taken place. Now, 
if we waited for low tide, the storm would be upon us, and 
if we went on without waiting we could not tell the extent 
of the shell, maybe a mile, maybe three miles. We might 
rip out the rear end in the car, or run out of gas, and then 
there would be forty miles of walking and no choice. The 
only thing for us to do was to turn around, and turn around 
we did, but it was, however, not so easily done as said. The 
wheels spun and sunk deeper with every revolution. We 
gathered up some seaweed and driftwood and built a short 
turn road. The wheels took hold on this and then spun up 
the sticks and sunk with a groaning noise. The “road” had 
to be patched up again and again. We kept on like this for 
one hour and a half and at the end of that time had made 
a U turn, covering about thirty feet. The big shell is as bad 
as quicksand. It seemed to have no bottom. When we were 
faced about, we climbed up inch by inch, onto the damp 
edge of the bank. The tide now left the sand beach clear, 
the speedway where the going was smooth. We drove the 
forty miles to the pass in a gale. The sky was ominous. The 
water was grey and choppy and the wind like a demon flung 
sand into the air. We did not know much about the weather 
on the Gulf. Was a tornado coming, or a tidal wave? Or 

109 


I 


one of those famous hurricanes? We could only guess, and 
it worried us some, with the high winds blowing. We 
finally reached the first pass, which was not much of a com¬ 
fort. Water was running dark and swift between us and 
the other shore, and the ferry was swinging on its moorings. 
It was a good two miles to the ferryman’s shack on the far 
side. Then we saw a man fishing off shore. We hailed him 
and as he came wading in we could see that he was not the 
ferryman but a fat, cross-eyed fellow with a dark, surly face. 
We asked him whether the ferryman would return that 
night, and he said, “You just missed him. It ain’t bin an 
hour ago he put some fishermen acrost. He won’t be back 
tonight.” 

“Well, how are you going over?” we asked. 

“I live here,” said the fellow. “Another man and me has 
a shack around the corner.” So, after all, Padre was not 
deserted. There were shacks hidden away behind the sand 
dunes, even beyond the second pass. But this one inhabitant 
did not look very sociable. 

The gale was blowing harder all the time and we saw that 
it would be difficult to pitch a tent. Well, the tide was still 
going out and the water in the pass looked shallow enough 
for us to ford. We left our car on the dry sand, and pulling 
up our trousers waded in, feeling for a sand bar with our 
feet. The water came up only to our waists. We made it 
without swimming. Then we set out to walk. It was like 
walking in a desert storm. The wind flung dry sand in our 
faces. 

At length we came to Corpus Pass, and there was the 
ferryman’s house shining out with lamplight for it was 
fast getting dark. We went on down the beach, hailing the 


no 


ferryman. He went back with us and brought our car across. 
Then he said, “The weather ain’t alookin’ good. You’re 
welcome to come in and spend the night with me. Dad’s 
in town, and there’s plenty a room.” 

We were glad not to have to pitch a tent in the gale. We 
parked our car above the high water mark, and went with 
the ferryman into his little shack. 

“Made it all outta driftwood,” he said, and we could see 
that this was so. There were two rooms and a screened porch 
and no two boards in the whole place were matched. Some 
were long and fat, others short and thin, and all were 
weathered to a nice sea-grey, and fitted together, neatly, to 
keep out most of the weather. In the middle of the night, 
when the rain came, we had to place our cots carefully to 
avoid the drips. The place was as quaint as it could be. 
Overhead was a copper ship’s lantern. The beds were built 
up bunks, fashioned out of driftwood. The walls were 
adorned, for the most part, with calendars, and in one 
corner sat the pride of the young ferryman’s heart, an old 
radio. 

“The neighbors’ll be in after supper to hear the weather 
report,” he said. 

We got dinner on our camp stove. We had some corn 
on the cob which the young fellow relished, and sausage, 
and spaghetti. He insisted upon washing up the dishes and 
he was more neat and clean about it than most men, and the 
dish towels were bleached white. 

“Ma brung us up that-a-way,” he said, scrubbing the pans. 

“We got plenty a water over the hill. All you have to do 
is dig a hole in the sand behind the dunes.” Then, waxing 
talkative, as he gave the supper plates to the dog to lick, he 


hi 


told us how a couple of girls had almost died of thirst on 
Padre. 

“They took off for Port Isabel just like you done,” he said. 
“They got stuck in the big shell, and couldn’t get out noway. 
They didn’t know about diggin’ for water behind the hills. 
An airplane was sent out to find ’em.” 

The next day we saw one of the “wells,” a mere pit in 
the sand behind the dunes. The water rose and fell with 
the tide; it was a bit brackish to the taste, not bad at all. 

As we waited for the neighbors our host told us all about 
the marvelous things they had salvaged from the sea—be¬ 
sides boards and beams for the house they had gotten more 
than enough tar to cover the roof. In the spring a four 
months’ supply of gasoline floated ashore in kegs, taken by 
the islanders under the law of salvage. 

“Never took a cent of relief in my life,” the young fellow 
said with pride. “We feel that-a-way out here. It ain’t kinda 
good to depend on handouts.” 

“My Pa’s an old rancher. He’s bin a commissioner,” he 
confided, glowing. “But three years ago things didn’t go 
good on the ranch. Pa come here with my stepma. The 
tidal wave druv her out. She lives over to Corpus now.” 
After all this information he grew silent. He was a quiet 
young Texan. 

Presently the neighbors came in, a motley lot of beach¬ 
combers in various stages of beard growth, dressed in over¬ 
alls and patched shirts, mostly barefoot, an independent, 
variously hard working and lazy lot as their temperaments 
dictated. One young fellow sat down immediately to read 
the Montgomery Ward catalogue, and scarcely said a word 
to anyone. 


112 


‘ So lazy, it’d take a squall to move him,” was the ferry¬ 
man’s good natured comment, received equally good na- 
turedly. Another oldish man with a pretty young wife, led 
the conversation about game, fish, boats, and weather. Ob¬ 
viously a well educated chap with an ambition to give his 
young wife a fine home. They lived down the pass a bit, in 
a small shanty, but he had ambition. All day he spent upon 
the water, fishing, laying up a few dollars. 

The first and most discussed topic was the weather. There 
are more kinds of weather to talk about on the Gulf than 
in New England, more violent, more destructive. At the 
moment the wind was howling loud enough outside. The 
whole company sat uneasy. 

“Think we’ll get a tidal wave?” they kept asking each 
other. The ferryman sat beside the radio, trying to get re¬ 
ports from the weather bureau, but there was too much static. 
It was about this time the previous year that the tidal wave 
“come and druv out the ferryman’s stepma.” 

“Dad took her off in a boat. I stayed here through it. 
Most got washed out. The waves come up bigger and bigger. 
Water come clean up to the table top, and I figgered any 
time I’d have to take to a boat.” 

“When’s the hurricane season?” we asked. 

“July and August,” said one. 

“September’s the worst month,” said another. 

“They don’t have no hurricanes in summer,” said another. 

No two agreed on the subject, but the general consensus 
of opinion was that the worst storms came in September. 
Some said that the water “got awful calm and strange 
lookin’—not a breath of wind blowin’ before a storm.” 
But few had experienced hurricanes. They are not frequent 

113 


on this part of the Gulf, but when they come, they come with 
a vengeance, destroying towns, tearing down everything in 
their path. 

Ever so often one of the guests would present the bottom 
of his bare foot, or the side of his leg for our inspection, 
saying, “That’s where one of them sting-rays got me.” From 
the ugly looking scars on the men’s legs and feet it seemed 
that these fish must be very bad indeed. 

“Big flat whitish fish, with long skinny tails,” said the 
ferryman. “An’ half way down their tails they got two 
spines, growin’ out like fishhooks, with barbs on ’em. They 
druv these spines into you. It hurts so you could scream. 
Sometimes they go clean through.” 

“You darned right,” said the reader of the Montgomery 
Ward catalogue, stirring, lifting his foot gingerly. “One of 
’em left the barbs in my leg. Had to have the muscle cut 
away. In the hospital a month, and on crutches six.” 

Each and everyone of these fishermen had a wound to 
show, and yet we found that all the coast people took the 
horrid fish casually, indifferently. The accidents were com¬ 
paratively rare, one a summer on the average, and the victims 
generally among the seiners, who spent long hours in the 
water. 

We found out later that the spines of the sting-ray inject 
poisonous, cutaneous mucus into the wound. They are big, 
flat sluggish fish, given to lying close to sand bars, rising 
and covering smaller prey when they strike. Some of them 
are very large, eight feet long, four feet wide. They are 
numerous along the Gulf coast but are not often seen this 
large. 

The talk turned now and then to things other than fish 


and weather. “Forty years ago,” said a seiner, “there was 
wild horses on these islands—mustangs—but the cattle and 
sheep men come in—always afightin’ each other. There’s 
many a man died of lead poisinin’ in them days.” 

The wild horses are all gone but—“There’s still plenty a 
game. Some turkeys, prairie wolves, deer, and, on the land 
side, big green sea turtles—good eatin’.” 

But the livelihood of the group depended upon the sea. 
They all fished with hook and line when there was a run 
on through the pass, seined up and down the islands, sold 
their catches at the docks in Port Aransas. Their existence 
was at the mercy of the sea and weather. Of these two things 
they talked and talked until finally they drifted out one by 
one into the storm and left us to sleep in the leaky shack. 

Next day the clouds were rolled back into fluffy puffs at 
the horizon. The wind was down. The sun shone brightly 
as we went outside to admire the gleaming bone of a huge 
whale’s skull, cast up some time ago upon the beach. 

In a newspaper sent down from Aransas Pass we found 
our storm reported as “Tornadic Winds.” But it had blown 
itself out. Calm clear weather again. 


EARLY INHABITANTS 


W E set up our tent on the end of Mustang near 
the Sand Crab Club, overlooking Corpus Christi 
Pass, with a view of the great dunes of Padre, 
desert, wild looking. We were led to meditate upon who, 
who if anybody, ever lived on the island before this tribe of 
transient sportsmen, and the few fisherfolk, and our friend, 
the ferryman. 

Back in the seventeenth century, so say the historians, 
when the Spanish and the French were both struggling for 
possession of the Gulf coast, the island, along with the tide 
water district near by, was occupied by the Karankawa 
Indians who found the Gulf a happy fishing ground as we 
too found it, and all real sportsmen of today find it. A small 
tribe, the Karankawas, probably not more than five hundred 
fighting men, but big, warlike fellows, given the stature of 
giants in the memory of some. Good fighters, good at spear¬ 
ing fish, a roving group. In the summer, paddling their 
dugout canoes from the overly hot mainland to the coast 
islands, setting up temporary shelters of poles and skins 
or reeds, living a rude, barbarous life. Joutel, a companion 
of Robert Cavalier de La Salle, describes the coast people 
in his journal—the women dressed in skins from waist 
to knee, the men unclothed—made their own cooking pot- 

116 


tery and baskets—early adopted Spanish horses—had with 
them “voiceless dogs with ears and snouts like foxes.” 

They lived on fish, wild turkey, great green sea turtles, 
eggs of sea fowls, nuts, fruit of the prickly pear, persim¬ 
mons, and berries. It is said by some that, armed with long 
bows as tall as themselves, they used to wade out into the 
shallow lagoons behind the island and shoot fish with ar¬ 
rows. In the winter time they would migrate to the main¬ 
land to hunt the buffalo which were reported to be plentiful 
along the coast in La Salle’s time. 

Arrogant, self-sufficient, one would have thought that 
they might have survived, but today there is not a trace of 
them, not even a skull. Gone the way of warriors, not a 
single descendant of the tribe has been found. Their ex¬ 
tinction was brought about in spite of the efforts of mis¬ 
sionaries who were sent out by Spain to save Karankawan 
souls, as part of the general effort to conquer and colonize 
Texas. The Gulf coast from Panuco to the San Antonio 
river had long been neglected by the Spanish who were 
suddenly aroused to action by the approach of French 
colonists on the east, and the advance of English hunters 
and trappers out west of the Mississippi river. In the late 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a number of Fran¬ 
ciscan missions were founded on the mainland, near the 
coast. Mission Nuestra Senora del Rosario del Cujanes * 
was built at the mouth of the Medina river for the particu¬ 
lar purpose of converting the difficult coast tribes. Four 
years’ work brought a fruit of twenty-one souls, baptized: 
twelve adults, nine children. Although the padres had bet¬ 
ter success in later years, Rosario was abandoned in 1828, 

* Cujanes—a generic name of Karankawa. 

117 


an ultimate failure, like most of the other Spanish missions 
along the Gulf in what is now the state of Texas. Later 
a few of the tribe lived at mission Espiritu Santo de Zuniga. 

These island people had cannibalistic tendencies, and did 
not take easily to the Christian faith. The mere handful 
that succumbed to persuasion were forever deserting, and 
the island fellows were forever making trouble among the 
mainland converts. On the whole it was a thankless task, 
that of saving Karankawan souls. After all was said and 
done they lived the way of their ancestors, fought the in¬ 
vaders of their land, attacked the bold Lafitte when one 
of his followers abducted one of the Indian women, fought 
with and for the Mexicans, took the American side in the 
battle of the Alamo, in which they lost heavily. Afterwards, 
they were under American protection. According to the 
historian Wooten they were wiped out by a band of Mexi¬ 
cans under Captain Rafael Aldrete, near Corpus Christi. 
The last report of them is of a band of ten, crossing the 
Rio Grande at its mouth, going begging into old Mexico. 

It was during the missionary period that the king of Spain 
made a grant of Padre Island to Father Nicholas Balli, and 
for him the island was named. Father Balli is said to have 
established a ranch on the grant, but to have had his resi¬ 
dence in Matamoros. When Mexico became a republic, the 
Spanish grant was cancelled. The Mexican state of Tamau- 
lipas authorized a division of the island between the Padre 
and his nephew John J. Balli. Thereafter the land several 
times changed hands. In 1879 Patrick F. Dunn became the 
owner, and he has been running cattle on it ever since. 
The causeway that was destroyed by the storm in 1932, 
was built by Colonel Sam Robertson, and named the Don 

118 


Patricio causeway after cattleman Dunn. Robertson’s land 
was later bought by Kansas City people who started to 
develop the place under the name of the Ocean Beach Drive 
Corporation. 

Pat Dunn still runs his cattle on the island, but all that 
remains of the other enterprises is slowly being covered by 
the ever shifting sands. Sometimes people bring in arrow 
heads, Spanish coins, Spanish daggers. One Corpus Christi 
man is said to have found a large box of coins at the base 
of what is now known as Money Hill. 

Some day Padre will probably be a fine beach resort. The 
chamber of commerce at Brownsville says that—“All the 
valley towns, as well as Corpus Christi, are co-operating on 
the project of building a road down Padre Island.” There 
are also rumors that the island will become a part of a Texas 
state park. 


SURF FISHING 


O UR days were spent in swimming, hunting the 
beaches for shells and sea life, angling for the fish 
that served as food for the Karankawan Indians. 
The water was wonderfully warm and fresh. To dash out 
and plunge into the low surf for a morning dip was lots of 
fun; but swimming was somewhat inhibited, the fun some¬ 
what qualified. We walked out gingerly, feeling our way, 
wondering all the time when we might step on the horrid 
flat body of a sting-ray, and get a barb in our legs for 
payment. Once in swimming depth, we were out of dan¬ 
ger, but above our depth we began, in spite of ourselves, to 
worry about sharks. One day as we were standing in the 
channel, waist deep, a dark sinister fin went rapidly by us, 
cutting the water cleanly, a sharp fin above the dimly out¬ 
lined body of a big fish. We stood petrified to the spot. 
A shark! But he passed us by, not even turning to one 
side or the other, went on up the pass and we breathed 
again. 

Here was good fishing for sharks and for us. Awake at 
early dawn, the fishermen ranged out across the neck of the 
pass, some waist deep and others buried in the water up to 
their necks, only their chins and hands in sight. The figures 
bent heavily against the tide, and cast with long bamboo 


120 


poles out into the channel, just at the place where the waters 
stopped breaking and flowed smoothly. They presented an 
odd picture because they were fully clothed, in dark trousers, 
shirts and sunbonnets, and the women in many cases wore 
gloves. 

We soon joined them. First we went to the pop stand, a 
shack run by a couple of boys who announced LIVE 
SHRIMP—WE ICE FISH—ICED WATERMELON. 
While the fellows fetched the bait, live shrimp and mullet 
from wire cages in the water, we got some dope on fishing. 

“Why don’t the fishermen wear bathing suits?” we asked, 
for not a one among them did. 

“Sunburn,” the boys said. 

“Well, what about sharks?” 

“Float your fish behind on a string and they won’t bother 
you none. Sometimes they grabs the fish, but they ain’t 
man eaters. Don’t worry. The fellas swim across the pass 
all the time. The sharks go back and forth there, but they 
don’t bother you none. They comes in the pass where there’s 
lots a feed, but mostly they stays out beyond the second 
sand bar.” 

“Has anyone here ever got bitten by a shark?” 

“No.” 

“Ever?” 

“No. Never. Well, I did hear tell about one man that 
lost his leg. But it was this way. He had his fish slung on a 
string close to his leg. A shark come along and made a pass 
at the fish—took off the fellow’s leg.” 

“But float your bait and fish behind you. Don’t worry. 
These sharks ain’t man eaters.” 

They all had the same ideas about sharks and we soon got 


121 


over our worries as we waded out into line with our long 
bamboo poles and our little wooden boxes full of live shrimp 
trailing in the water behind us. It took a lot of energy to 
stand up against the current of the tide which was rushing, 
sucking and pulling as if it would drag us under. Then we 
had to think about casting out, and baiting and rebaiting. 
The poles were heavy to hold above water. The sea trout 
were biting. All around us the people were hauling them in, 
nice three and four pound speckled fish, and sometimes a 
whiting—good to eat; and lots of skipjacks and funny long 
needle fish and long-whiskered cats—not good to eat. It 
was great sport and we soon got on to hooking them, stand¬ 
ing hour after hour in the waters of the Gulf, trailing a bit 
of bait in the pass. Some days they wouldn’t bite at all, but 
usually there was a run on at dawn and at dusk, the best 
time to fish. At heat of noon, we had no luck. 

The air was so warm that we never thought of changing 
our clothes when we came ashore. The sun and wind took 
care of them. In a very few minutes we were as dry as chaff. 

They were nice friendly people, the Texans who came 
down to the islands to fish. Standing waist deep, shoulder 
to shoulder, as it were, we were all very neighborly. The 
fishermen were from San Antonio and Houston, mostly— 
glad to be away from the heat, inland. A jolly crowd, and 
the wives were splendid sports. It was quite different from 
the East where most often the men of the family went off 
with other males to fish, without female society. In the next 
tent to us was an aerial photographer, an old hand at surf 
fishing. He was well equipped with a fine bait casting rod 
and a good reel. He sent his bait sizzling out beyond ours 
which were limited by the extent of our lines tied solidly to 


122 


the tips of our poles. Once, the fellow caught onto a big 
fish. We all thought it was a mackerel, and we went run¬ 
ning into shore with him. The catch turned out to be a 
shovel nosed shark, four feet long, with a wide nose and a 
stubby, fat head. 

After dark we looked forward to a luscious sea dinner, 
trout fried to a crisp; or if we failed to land any fish, we 
could always eat the bait, the shrimp which could be had 
for a few pennies, a big pail of them. 


123 


SAND CRABS 


Gulf coast was a source of constant wonder and 
delight, forever unfolding new life, divulging life 

JL ways of odd creatures. The tide leaves a fringe of 
strange, beautifully colored, beautifully coiled shells— 
spindle shells, conch shells, snail shells, an occasional cham¬ 
bered nautilus, all empty, lifeless, once the armored protec¬ 
tion of small sea animals. Sometimes at the water’s edge, 
the comparatively rare olive shells can be retrieved from 
under the hard, damp sand. The little molluscs who own 
these shells can be traced by the short mole-like furrows 
which they leave in their wake as they move slowly along. 

One of the most entertaining of all shell-dwellers is the 
hermit crab who lives in a borrowed home. He picks out 
a shell that suits his size and fancy, crawls into it backwards, 
and thereafter carries it about with him wherever he goes, 
discarding it only when he needs a larger home. The ab¬ 
dominal appendages of this odd fellow are either wanting 
or rudimentary. The last pair are used for holding his 
house upon him. With his front appendages he walks upon 
the ocean floor. When frightened, he withdraws into his 
shell like a turtle. 

Most crabs live in the sea as the hermit crab does, but a 
few are land-lovers. We found that if we sat absolutely 


124 



motionless, the empty beach on all sides of our tent would 
suddenly become alive with scuttering sand crabs, all sizes 
of them from mites as small as crickets, to old wise fellows 
as big as a man’s hand. Cautiously, at first, they would 
venture up out of their holes, and then, becoming bolder, 
they would snoop around looking for any food we might 
have left for them. They would feel each crumb with their 
claws in the most comical manner, seeming to tell by touch 
what was good and what was bad. They would touch a 
piece of eggshell, drop it, touch a piece of egg and stuff it 
into their mouths. At the least movement on our part, a 
turn of the head or arm, away they would go, scuttering 
head over heels with all eight legs to disappear as if by 
magic into the earth, only to reappear, with elaborate 
caution, a few moments later. 

They are constructed most oddly, these crabs. Their 
bodies have become adjusted to life near the high water 
line. Their gills are adapted to retain moisture from the 
damp sand. They can run forwards, sidewise or backwards 
with equal facility. Not the least remarkable part about 
them is their eyes which protrude above their heads on 
stems for all the world like match sticks. When they go 
below ground it would seem that these eyes might be in¬ 
convenient, but not so. Nature has arranged things so 
that when a hurrying crab nears his hole, he can drop his 
eye stems quickly, sidewise, into small pockets on either 
side of his head. 

At night it is great sport to turn a flash-light on a busy 
crab. If caught directly in the line of the light he will sit 
calmly, fascinated, hypnotized, and, as like as not, continue 
his business. We came upon one eating a choice bit of 


125 


shrimp. With his eye stems extended an inch above his 
head he watched us but went on chewing his dinner, shov¬ 
ing bits of the food into his mouth and holding it there 
with two big lobster claws while his jaws worked rapidly. 
A grain of sand blew onto one of his eyes, whereupon he 
flexed the stem and wiped it off. Then, suddenly becoming 
aware of us, he went off sidewise, running with all eight 
legs. We blocked his hole and he sped off in the opposite 
direction at top speed, but at length, bewildered and non¬ 
plused, he turned about and showed fight, tried to bite the 
flashlight and our toes. 

Another land-loving crab is the fiddler. He has an over¬ 
developed front claw which is simply tremendous compared 
to the size of the other one of the pair. He carries the over¬ 
size appendage in front of his body, and waves it continually, 
making motions as if he were playing a tune on a claw. 
There are many of these odd little fellows around the piles 
of the docks at Port Aransas. 

But the ones that really infest the islands are the sand 
crabs. Many tourists think that they are tarantulas, al¬ 
though their color is not black. On the contrary they are 
a light, almost transparent tan, nearly invisible against the 
sand, but their habits of life, their way of making their 
homes in holes in the ground, mislead the casual observer 
who probably sees very little of the sand crab who is a shy 
fellow. He will run and hide on the approach of man or 
car, will move away with amazing speed, faster than most 
spiders, faster than the black tarantula who walks ponder¬ 
ously and likes to take his own time about things. 

We lived among thousands of these funny crabs, lived 
as a matter of fact very much as they did, a life in the sand. 

126 



Portuguese Men-of-War are the most inter¬ 
esting of all jellyfish; oddly constructed sea 
creatures with pear-shaped bladders inflated 
with gas to form jelly sails . 





























For, with the trade winds blowing, we had sand in our eyes, 
sand in our ears, sand on our tooth brushes, sand for a 
sauce on our food. It seemed impossible to keep it out of 
cook pans. Sitting, as we did, with the ground for chairs 
and table, the grains filtered in here and there with amazing 
ease, joining freely with grains of salt and sugar. At noon¬ 
time when the sun was too hot for comfort, we took a 
siesta, sitting like some Arab tribesmen under the canopy 
of a wildly flapping army blanket, spread out gypsy style 
on four crooked sticks. This was the zero hour. It was 
then that we swore at the sand and the sun, and wished we 
had a house. But a few hours later when the sun was gone 
a bit down the sky, we were up and about again, having 
fun, fishing or exploring the beach. 

In with the tide came whole droves of jellyfish, cast up 
by wind and surf, stranded, powerless to return again to 
the sea. Glistening on the sand, thick, white bell-shaped 
bodies; flat, pan-shaped bodies, and the bright, gleaming 
purple and blue of the Portuguese man-of-war. The latter 
are the most interesting of all jellyfish; oddly constructed 
sea creatures with pear-shaped bladders inflated with gas 
to form jelly sails. When they are in their natural habitat, 
the bladders float upon the surface of the water, shining 
iridescent, blue and purple, in the sun. At high tide fleets 
of them come sailing bravely over the breakers, holding 
themselves set into the wind. Beneath the bladders hang 
the rest of the animals, or animal, as the case may be. All 
jellyfish belong to the lowest kind of many celled animals, 
and there seems to be some difference of opinion among 
naturalists as to whether the man-of-war is a specialized in¬ 
dividual, or a share-the-work colonial. One set of individuals, 


129 


or organs, functions as stingers and food catchers, another 
set devours food within the body cavity which serves alike 
for digestion and circulation. Men-of-war dine upon small 
sea animals which they paralyze or kill with their nettle 
organs. These nettle organs consist of small cell cavities 
each containing a poisonous fluid and a threadlike sting¬ 
ing tube which is ejected into whatever object may happen 
to contact the sensitive tentacle, be it small Crustacea, small 
fish, or the arms and legs of swimmers. The nettle organs 
irritate the skin of human beings, leaving a stinging sensa¬ 
tion much like that produced by the nettle plant. The 
effect often lasts for an hour. 

In July, Portuguese men-of-war are abundant on the Gulf 
coast. At low tide hundreds of them are caught in the 
sands, bladders waving and twisting in the breeze, tentacles 
pulled in close to the body cavity, they lie huddled in a 
slimy repulsive mass of jelly. They do not live long out 
of water. They shrivel under the hot sun. If you step 
on one, it will explode with a loud pop. As you drive along 
the beach, the bursting of bladders under the car wheels 
makes a regular Fourth of July fusilade of popping. 

The time passed quickly, fishing, collecting shells, talk¬ 
ing with the fishermen. These fellows lived a friendly life, 
helping one another. 

One day the two boys at the pop and bait stand hailed 
us. They held up two wooden fish images, each three feet 
long. 

“What are you going to do with them?” we asked, sitting 
down at the counter in the sand to have a bottle of iced 
pop. 

“They come up out of the sea. Washed up onter the 

130 


beach,” said they, just as if it were an everyday occurrence 
for wooden fish to come up out of the Gulf. 

“Some old cafe signs, most likely.” 

They obviously had something on their minds. After 
considerable hemming and hawing, they commenced. “We 
heard from some of the fellers that you can paint pitchers?” 

“Well?” 

“Well—we’d sorter like to have these fish painted up to 
make the place look sorter dressy, you know how ’tis.” 
This much said they added quickly, “You can have all the 
bait you want—free. Mullets and shrimp—any time you 
wants some!” 

So. The wooden fish got a coat of paint, with bright 
silver scales and blue eyes. “Looked mighty fancy” swing¬ 
ing on a hook over the shack. We got a pail of shrimp for 
dinner. 


SEINING 


O NE day the ferryman’s pa came over to Mustang. 
A bent old fellow, but strong and wiry. 

“I’m goin’ seinin’ down the island,” he said. 
“Want to go?” he asked us. 

First of all he gathered up the net which was spread out 
drying in the salt grass behind the sand hills. It was a big 
net, three hundred feet long, and as he hauled it in, foot 
by foot, he inspected it, mending holes with a wooden 
bobbin. 

“Beats all the way the thing tears up,” he said. “A 
swordfish’ll tear a net to bits.” 

Finally, with the net on the running board of the car, 
we set forth. 

“We’ve gotter go down yonder—below the second pass,” 
said our friend. “No nets ’lowed in the passes. Government 
keeps ’em open. You can fish in ’em with a hook and line 
all right, but with a seine you gotter go a mile above or 
below.” 

As we drove down the beach, our throats got dry, and 
we began to cough and sneeze, and our eyes began to run 
as if there were red pepper in the air. 

“Smokin’ too much. That’s it,” the old fellow said as we 
all coughed together as though we had suddenly caught a 

132 


germ. There was something in the air, like an odorless 
gas. 

We stopped the car a mile the other side of the second 
pass, and for a while the seining took our minds off the 
bad air. Out into the water went the big net, dragged out 
to sea by one man, held up by another near shore, both fel¬ 
lows straining mightily against the pull of the tide. On 
one edge the net was loaded with lead plugs; on the other 
edge it was bordered with a series of floats. The weighted 
side dragged bottom, and collected whatever fish might 
be in its path. Once out properly, the seiner circled in 
again, making a trap, bringing silver fish up onto the 
sands, tangled in mesh, flopping and struggling to get 
back into the Gulf—sea trout, whitings, spadefish, and 
a sting-ray measuring four feet from the end of his nose 
to the tip of his long whip tail; and many, many crabs 
which got their claws entangled and would not let go their 
hold for any amount of pulling. To loosen them the seiners 
shook the net as a terrier shakes a rat, and one by one they 
dropped onto the sands, often as not upside down, in which 
position they lay, frantically waving their claws, trying 
to bite anything in reach. It was the breeding season for 
crabs and masses of orange-colored eggs were attached to 
the underbodies of the females. 

The catches were not large, and we were very winded. 
After three hauls we were doubled up with coughing. 

The seiner said, “By crickey! ’Tain’t smokin’ what ails 
us. Seems like there’s some kinda gas in the air.” 

We quit early, with too small a catch for market. The 
next day we woke up coughing, sneezing, our throats dry 
and rasping. The gas, or whatever it might be, was creep- 


133 


ing down the island. At the pop stand we found the boys 
coughing too. 

“We figgers there’s a volcano eruptin’ some’eres under 
the Gulf,” said one fellow. “Bill tells as how the fish is 
dying by the millions. When he come back from seinin’ 
down near Nicaragua, he says he seen a real graveyard of 
fish, knee deep. That’s what he calls it, a graveyard, knee 
deep.” Nicaragua referred to the wreck of a three masted 
ship which lay in the sands about forty miles down Padre. 

“Tell ’em about that feller that had all his tires go flat 
with catfish bones,” said another fisherman. “That beats 
all. Eight punctures he had on them catfish bones! By 
gosh!” 

A more serious minded fellow chimed in. “I hear tell 
they ain’t buyin’ no more fish at the port. Not a one, till 
they finds out what’s killin’ them just off Padre. Volcano 
eruptin’ out yonder under the water, some says.” 

At Port Aransas we found that more and more rumors 
about the dead fish were coming in. And here, too, the 
people were beginning to choke and sneeze and complain 
of colds. The fishermen were in a bad state of mind. No 
dealer would handle their fish, until the cause of the deaths 
on the coast of Padre had been determined. 

We went to the coast guard station to report the trouble. 
The station was built high above the ground on big cement 
piers, hurricane proof, ready to stand up against any tidal 
wave, neat and efficient looking. The captain’s office was 
upstairs, at the end of a series of rooms which were set up 
with cots ready to receive storm victims. The captain was 
an old Norwegian seaman, blond as a Viking. Tilted back 
in a swivel chair among barometers, weather charts and 


134 


seamen’s things, he talked to us in a slightly foreign burr, 
saying that he would report the gas to the marine biology 
laboratory at La Quinta. 

“An old-timer, here, was telling me that the gas came 
once before on this island, years back when the old fellow 
was a small boy. Lots of fish were killed,” said the captain. 
“Millions of them, just like now. And besides, dogs and 
coyotes died too. Lots of small animals. It didn’t bother 
the large animals like cattle.” 

Then he told us something of the duties of the coast 
guards. 

“We try in every way possible to protect and save human 
life,” he said. “We keep a watch posted with field glasses 
in the tower on top of the station. There is a man at the 
radio. If a ship is wrecked, we send aid. 

“Every hour of the day weather reports come over the 
radio. Sometimes a storm is reported a week ahead. They 
can tell near about where it’s going to hit. If one’s headed 
for these islands, we warn the people. Tell them in time so 
that they can leave the place if they want to.” 

A few days later we read in the papers the answer to the 
gas problem. Sulphur dioxide from an under sea volcanic 
eruption had caused the nasal and throat irritations, and 
the death of the millions of fish. It was estimated that 
10,000,000 pounds had been destroyed. 


135 


THE PORT 


W E were now camped just outside Port Aransas, 
on the Gulf side, about a mile from the last 
pier. The port is a small town numbering 
under 1,000 inhabitants. It has the air of a fishing village. 
The sea-washed docks are the center of vitality, and the rest 
of the town, the general store, the cafes, and beer halls, the 
small wooden houses, spread out like a web from the central 
hub, and on the fringe are the tourist camps, the inn, and 
the bathing beaches. There was a time, not long ago, when 
there was little else to the place but a bunch of old grey 
shacks, squatters’ houses, but now it is modernized, has elec¬ 
tric lights, a good ice plant and a water system, good tourist 
accommodations. The story goes that a rich young fellow 
from Connecticut, who was ordered south by his doctor 
because of ill health due to a football accident, landed in 
Corpus Christi, and after seeing Mustang Island, started 
promoting the port. He sunk over a million dollars in the 
causeway road to the island (that is the gossip anyway), 
and built a whole new block of store buildings off to one 
side of the main village in a spot where he thought the 
center ought to be. You can see the stores now, deserted. 
The town wouldn’t move. Besides, just when the place 
should have been booming, the depression came along, and, 

*36 


on top of that, the eastern fellow died of his football in¬ 
juries. The town had been started in the first place as a 
fishing village, one of the many little Texas fisheries which 
help to produce the state’s yearly output of over 15,000,- 
000 pounds of fish. 

The port goes on making money out of the Gulf waters, 
fishing for red snappers, seining for shrimps, taking out 
parties of sportsmen after mackerel and tarpon. 

The docks are on the mainland side. One day we went 
into the Harbor cafe which hangs over the water beside the 
ferry landing. There, upon stools at the counter, we sat 
ourselves and drank coffee, viewing the active dock life from 
a window. There were many people around, or so it seemed, 
after our life on the other end of the island. There were 
numerous sportsmen, happy in old khaki clothes and jungle 
hats, men from hot inland Texas, glad to be down by the 
sea. Wives and youngsters were with them, women in beach 
pajamas, and Chinese coolie hats, bright colored, picturesque. 
These people moved about gayly among the all-year-around 
residents of the town who looked a bit self-conscious before 
the sudden influx of up country folk. The vacationists 
mingled on the dock with the old fishermen who were 
always tinkering about, splicing rope, mending engines, 
painting boats, chatting, spinning yarns, or sometimes 
asleep in the shade of a building. It is a nice little fishing 
town, Port Aransas. At dawn, during the summer months, 
a fleet of shrimp boats sets forth, returning again at dusk 
to cluster about the docks like a bunch of chickens, returning 
to roost. The shrimpers are small, not often over thirty feet 
in length. Some are new and shining, with sharp, stream¬ 
lined prows, the rear decks shaded with canopies to keep 

137 


the hot Gulf sunbeams off the heads of fishermen. But for 
the most part, the boats are old, pot bellied, sea scarred. 

“Who knows about fishing in this place?” we asked. 

“Mr. Johnny Mercer,” said the waitress. “He’s been here 
all his life and his father before him. Guess he knows all 
there is to know about this place.” 


138 


TARPON 


W E went down to the docks. 

“Mr. Johnny? There he is. In his boat,” 
said a youngster. There he was, a small old 
fellow, hard knit, sunburnt with learning and living the 
ways of the sea. He came up onto the dock to chat. 

“Do you own a shrimp boat?” we asked. 

“Not now. That's my boat,” he said pointing to a small 
motor craft, painted white. “She’s a neat one for tarpon 
fishin’. Built every inch on her myself. To get things done 
out here, a fellow has ter do ’em his self,” he said with some 
pride. 

“When I was a boy, we didn’t have no fancy motor boats. 
I was borned right here on the island, you know. In them 
days a fellow could walk across to the mainland when the 
tide was out. Now they got them new fangled dredges, 
keepin’ a thirty foot channel open. And a fellow won’t 
trust his life to a sail no more. Was a time when all the 
supplies for the port was brung from Rockport in a skiff.” 

But the tarpon hadn’t changed, not a bit. “Best fishin’ 
grounds in the world, down here,” he said. “Our tarpon’ll 
average five feet long—weigh 60 pounds and upwards. The 
biggest fish I ever seen was caught right here, out by the 

139 


jetty. Seven foot, five inches, he measured.” A big fish, that. 

“Are they good eating, these tarpon?” we asked. 

“Never heard tell of anybody eatin’ one,” he said. “You 
mount ’em, or throw ’em away. They’re just a sport fish. 
Now at our tarpon rodeo—” 

“Tarpon rodeo?” we asked. 

“It’s the big fishin’ contest. Usually comes off in May. 
There’s prizes for the biggest catch. The women’s record is 
ten in one day, the men’s—twenty-six. We figgers points 
on tackle and size. The lighter the tackle, the more points 
you get.” He rummaged around in his boat and brought 
out a short thick rod with an immense reel. 

“That’s what we catch ’em with,” he said. We felt of the 
rod. “How long does it take to bring one in with this 
outfit?” 

“Anywheres from fifteen minutes to two and a half hour, 
dependin’ on how big the fish is and how light the tackle. 
Would you like to go out fishin’ with me?” he added. 

“Tarpon fishin’?” we asked, still fingering the rod. 
“That’s a rich man’s sport. We can’t afford it. I hear it’d 
cost us fifteen dollars a day without tackle.” 

“Well, I takes ’em out for ten—sometimes—in the de¬ 
pression,” he said. “But it won’t cost you nothin’.” 

“How come?” we asked, astonished. 

“Well,” said Mr. Johnny, somewhat abashed, “I seen 
one of them silver fish you painted for the boys at Corpus 
Pass. I kinda likes it. I figgered you might make me a 
pitcher—and I’d show you how them tarpon’s caught.” 

We started out from Port Aransas, speeding through the 
channel towards the Gulf in Mr. Johnny’s motor boat. Mr. 
Johnny (that’s what everyone called him at the port) sat 


140 


at the wheel in the center of the craft, we sat at the back 
end, facing the stern, looking down at the V-shaped fur¬ 
row of surf sent up in our wake. In our finger tips was 
that expectant little tingling that fishermen feel when they 
set out with rod in hand. But never before had we set out 
after such big game. It was like going on a lion hunt in 
Africa, after shooting rabbits. 

“The best tarpon grounds in the world’s out yonder by 
the jetty,” said our guide, pointing to a long bulwark of 
big rocks, jutting far out into the open Gulf, a storm protec¬ 
tion for the port. 

It was seven in the morning, but already there were a 
half dozen boats cruising up and down, keeping close in 
to the rock wall. Men and women settled comfortably with 
their feet up on the gunwales of their boats, lines trailing 
indolently out behind. The faces of some were painted like 
devil dancers, ghastly white with zinc oxide, to prevent 
sunburn. 

We got in line, cast mullet baited hooks behind us into 
the clear green waters of the Gulf. At first there was no 
action. We just sat, lazily riding the high swells which 
rolled our small boat from trough to trough in a nauseating 
manner. Black bodied gulls with white throats and crimson 
marked heads, flew by in bird procession, close to the sur¬ 
face of the water. Fat pelicans flapped heavily past. Up and 
down, we cruised, up and down, close to the jetty, back 
again a few yards further out, passing and repassing other 
boats whose owners would indicate with a gesture of hand 
—“no luck.” 

Every time we made a turn, the bottom of our stomachs 
churned with a sickening sensation. Several fishermen be- 


gan to turn a greenish hue. But suddenly things began 
to happen. We had no more time for seasickness. We re¬ 
covered immediately. A man passing close by, shouted, 
“One just struck back there!” Then, there was a terrific 
jerk upon my line—a rush under water, a jerk so hard 
that it almost snatched the rod out of my hands. And 
then—slack line! I pulled up. Bait, hook, sinker, all gone. 
Bitten squarely off, and only the rod left trembling in my 
hands. 

They were biting all around us now. A fellow had one 
hooked, a beauty, leaping out of the water like a bronco 
bucking, a tremendous fish. He had him in short order, a 
matter of twenty minutes, reeled, gaffed, and tied to the 
side of the boat—over five feet long. 

Then I had another strike. A huge fish broke water be¬ 
hind our boat. He rose again and again. It took all my 
strength to hold him. The short thick rod bent. The reel 
sang. Then, as suddenly, he was gone, down somewhere 
under that deep water. I didn’t have the trick of holding 
them, and that was the last chance I got. The water became 
a glassy furnace. The tarpon quit biting. It was over, for 
this time. No luck but plenty of excitement, and we had 
become tarpon enthusiasts. 


142 


SHRIMPS 


M R. JOHNNY arranged for us to go out with the 
shrimp fleet—after some difficulty. His friend 
Smith was willing to take passengers—men pas¬ 
sengers at least, but he was against the very idea of a woman 
going along. 

“I’ve taken ’em all right. But never again. They always 
get seasick.” 

I swore that I never had had the slightest tendency in 
that direction. Finally he was persuaded, somewhat against 
his better judgment. 

Before sun-up we were at the docks, and even then most 
of the boats were already standing out towards sea like a 
flock of swimming ducks. Smith had his motor chugging 
and as soon as we set foot on deck he threw her in gear 
(Smith’s boat was fitted with a Fordson tractor engine); 
and we started out over the channel streaming smoothly 
seaward with the others in the morning light. Beyond the 
long tarpon jetty, out upon the open Gulf, the waters came 
rolling and falling under us, tossing us up one moment 
on a ridge, dropping us the next instant into a sickening 
trough, setting all of the shrimp boats to cavorting like so 
many toy roly-polies. Yet, the sea was not really heavy, 
there was no storm in sight. The sky was clear. It was 


143 


good Gulf weather, but there was something about the 
build of a shrimp boat that wasn’t quite right. Smith’s was 
a heavy old tug with a broad, matronly body, with no frills 
such as shade canopies. Slow moving but sturdy and de¬ 
pendable, she went at the waves at a lumbering pace, often 
spanking them squarely with her blunt prow. It was a 
joke among the fishermen that Smith was the first one to 
start out in the morning, and the last one to reach the 
banks; at night, when the procession was homeward bound, 
the tail boat was Smith’s. And it seemed that this was so 
because the fellows that started behind us gained and passed 
us by before we were out beyond the jetty. We came slowly, 
rising lazily up and over the swells and rolling sidewise 
down again with a twisting motion. It was a horrid sensa¬ 
tion, and hard to get the hang of. The boat was always 
coming up and making your stomach hit the sides of your 
chest in an uncomfortable manner while the prow smacked 
smartly into another wave. 

On the journey outward, the deck hand set the big seine 
in readiness, primed the gasoline engine that was to pull 
up the net, arranged the barrels of ice, and coiled up ropes. 
He was a big dark Mexican, with a bright flashing grin. 
He did not have a good command of English but was very 
communicative. 

Gesturing with his hands, he said, “I got wife—fiv 
childer— Las year—I maka de fiftin dolla—lotta money— 
I—what you call it—make cement. Fi dolla—maybe four 
dolla—maybe seex dolla for de childer— Now I no maka 
so much—” 

Then he would break off the monologue and say, “You 
no feela the seek, is it?” 


! 44 


This kind of conversation, mingled with the smell of the 
boat and the odors of the gas engine, was very disconcerting. 
1 gazed with concentration at the shore line, but it didn’t 
help much. 

The fleet was cruising along the coast of Mustang Island, 
about a mile off shore. Smith said that sometimes they went 
out as far as fifteen miles! As soon as we were well beyond 
the jetty, the big seine was dropped astern. At the end of 
fifteen minutes a small test net was drawn up by the power 
of the gas engine. It brought eleven shrimp. 

“When they’re runnin’, there’ll be fifty in that net,” said 
Smith, dropping it back again into the sea. At intervals of 
fifteen minutes the test net was hauled up. The results 
indifferent, ten, fifteen, twelve shrimp. 

For the first one and a half hours I kept my word about 
being seasick. Then my stomach revolted. I felt so ill that 
I no longer had a speck of pride. I crawled away to the 
prow end of the small boat, lay down and shut my eyes. 
An eternity passed. 

At the end of about two hours there was great excitement 
aboard. A large flock of gulls gathered, screaming, over 
our stern. Several other boats stood by, watching anxiously. 
We were hauling up our seine. 

With an immense exertion of will power I crawled 
around to the stern, looked for a moment at the remarkable 
life that had swarmed unseen beneath our boat, now dumped 
flopping and squirming on the deck. Only a poor quantity 
of bull shrimp but several white bellied sting-rays, dark 
electric rays, small thin silver fish, ugly sculpins with beau¬ 
tiful intense blue eyes, living sand dollars, the fibrous life 
covering on them, starfish, conch shells with the living 

145 


molluscs, calico colored crabs, shovel nosed sharks, and 
long eel-like needle fish. 

Then came the most fun of all. The few shrimps were 
separated and dumped into ice barrels. The rest of the sea 
life, the small fish, the crabs, the young sharks, were tossed 
into the water in our wake. Whereupon the gulls swooped 
down, often grabbing the fish in mid-air before they had 
time to hit the water. 

The shrimp were not running but we kept on just the 
same. The sun was up, glaring, making the water a blis¬ 
tering mirror. We were closer to shore, a mere half mile 
from the sand beach. Thereupon I decided that it would 
be an easy matter to jump overboard and swim for it, 
escape this rolling prison. But about this time Smith said, 
“Funny. The big sharks are not after us yet. Many a day I 
seen five big fellows, trailin’ us, fighting to get the fish we 
dump over. Then they’ll take tin cans or anything you 
throw to them. A man wouldn’t last two seconds if he 
fell in.” I didn’t swim ashore! 

When the shrimp are running the boats stay out till eve¬ 
ning. On this day they quit after seven eternal hours. 
Slowly we steamed back into harbor behind the others. 

The rest of the men were rolling barrels of iced shrimp 
off onto the dock and into the buyers’ sheds. They all had 
poor catches, an average of two hundred pounds to a boat. 
At three cents a pound they didn’t make much profit. 
Many days are like this. Then there will come a time when 
each boat will bring in a thousand, two thousand pounds, 
and then everybody drinks lots of beer and is happy. But 
those days don’t happen more than once a month, and 
for the rest the men make just a living, and their beer. 

146 


CANNERY 


t JT AVING seen the shrimp hauled out of the sea, 
I we stopped to watch them being put into cans. 
L We visited the Rice Brothers cannery at Aransas 
Pass. They put up Texas Quality and about a hundred 
other brands. 

It was the Fourth of July. Yet, the building was open, 
the cauldrons going at full steam. A white coated attendant 
showed us about the place. He explained that the canneries 
could not stop on holidays. They have to take sea food 
and preserve it when the boats bring it in, Sunday or holi¬ 
day, or any day at all when there is a run on. So on the 
Fourth of July the place was wide open. In another factory 
the shrimps had already been shredded of their shelly coats. 
Now they were boiling at a great rate in large vats. The 
steam rose in dense clouds with a heavy stench of fish odor, 
quite nauseating. The odor of thousands of shrimp hung 
heavy in the room. But the place was immaculately clean, 
a model of sanitation. The cement floors were washed spot¬ 
less. The machinery was shining. The workers were 
dressed in clean clothes. After the shrimps had boiled for 
a time they were taken out of the vats onto endless belts 
and blown until dry and flufdy looking, and then the fat, 
pink bodies were set in piles before a group of girls who 

147 



popped them rapidly into cans. The cans were sent of? 
on another belt to be filled with steaming water, and 
squirted with salt, and capped ready to be shipped to vari¬ 
ous dinner tables for tasty salads. They looked good to 
eat, these shrimps. The machinery to prepare them was re¬ 
markable, working with a sure rhythm—circular discs 
settled the contents and capped them tightly in place. The 
packers were swift too, competing with metal fingers. They 
got twenty cents an hour for filling cans. The girls who 
filled glass jars worked by piece work—made two or three 
dollars a day. The jars had to be filled more carefully, so 
that the shrimps would look appetizing through the glass. 

“In a good year we put up four million pounds,” said 
the attendant. 

We now had quite a feeling for shrimp. It meant some¬ 
thing to get a shrimp salad. We had seen the seining, and 
now the cannery—the boiling vats and the busy hands, pre¬ 
paring them. 

All the time we had been living on the Texan Islands we 
had been thinking about neighbor Mexico which almost 
touched the southern end of Padre. There, a few hours’ drive 
away, was the Mexican coast, leading straight down into 
the tropics. Just south of the border lay the coast islands 
of Mexico which seemed to be waiting for exploration. Ac¬ 
cordingly we took stock of our finances. One great advan¬ 
tage of camping is that the camper has free rent. On Padre, 
food had cost us little. To a supply of canned goods we 
had added the sea trout and other sea food that we had 
caught for ourselves, and cheap shrimp. We had not cared 
to eat meat. As for gasoline, we had used only a few gallons 

148 


for the short beach runs. Now, leaving the islands we 
found that we had almost as much money left when we 
came off, as when we went on. On a trip of this kind the 
great expense is gasoline and oil. The rest of the time one 
can live on a mere pittance, and still have fun. We figured 
that a budget of $75.00 would more than see us home over 
two thousand miles. We tucked away this amount in trav¬ 
ellers’ checks, and twenty-five more which we planned to 
spend for Mexican curios of the kind that we had so often 
admired in the shops in New York City. With our budget 
thus settled we set forth to cross the border. 

Leaving Corpus we drove westward until we reached 
national highway 281, just above Alice. Thence, driving 
southward on the inland route, parallel to the coast, through 
cotton lands where the plants were already burst into pink 
and white blooms—southward toward the valley of the Rio 
Grande which, at this point where it empties into the Gulf 
of Mexico, keeps an almost east-west direction. 


149 


GOLDEN VALLEY 


“—a river in the level country which was two leagues wide, in 
which there were fishes as big as horses and large numbers of 
very big canoes, with more than twenty rowers on a side— 
they carried sails,—their lords sat on the poop deck under 
awnings, and on the prow they had a great golden eagle. 
—the lord of that country took his afternoon nap under a great 
tree on which hung a great number of little gold bells, which 
put him to sleep as they swung in the air. —everyone had their 
ordinary dishes made of wrought plate, and the jugs and bowls 
were of gold.” 

Golden dreams of Spaniards who believed the words and 
signs of Indian informers, believed that there was a country 
where gold was so plentiful that it was fashioned into 
“ordinary dishes.” This particular story of golden country 
was told by an Indian called the Turk to Spanish explorer 
Coronado when he was encamped in the upper reaches of 
the Rio Grande, near present day Albuquerque, New Mex¬ 
ico. El Turco, says Castaneda, the historian of the expedi¬ 
tion, spoke of a river far to the east. He led Coronado on a 
futile wandering out over the great plains, gold seeking. 

Today, this description, in part, might well be applied 
to the valley of the lower Rio Grande, a country rich 
with gold and silver, not metal stuff of Spanish dreams, 


150 



The palms are now man planted, man 
tended, set out in stately rows lining citrus 
orchards, windbreaks against the storms 

from the Gulf . 













but golden oranges, grapefruit, lemons, tangerines—citrus 
wealth. 

We followed along the lower Rio Grande, the valley 
of the River of Palms, La Salle called it. So it is today, 
but the palms are now man planted, man tended, set out 
in stately rows lining citrus orchards, windbreaks against 
the storms from the Gulf. 

The citrus gold is only recently American; Texan more 
recently still. Citrus fruit has a very old history. Grown 
anciently in Japan and China, it probably had its origin in 
the Burmese peninsula and southern China. Today, bitter 
oranges on thorny trees grow wild in the jungle of North 
India. From India they started on their long journey 
to America, taken by Arab hands to the Arab home¬ 
land, probably thence to Africa, and to old Spain. By the 
Spanish they were brought to the West Indies and to Flor¬ 
ida, which was to become one of the largest American 
citrus centers. Only very recently has Texas entered this 
commercial market. At first the delta land of the lower 
Rio Grande was ranched out with cattle—until the rail¬ 
road came in 1904. Then into this semi-tropical land of rich 
sunshine came the cotton growers, the vegetable growers, 
and the growers of fruit who recognized the place as a 
potentially fine citrus country. Freezing occurs every winter 
but the cold is of but short duration. The land is dry but 
here lies the Rio Grande offering itself for irrigation projects. 
Agriculture has increased rapidly. 

As we drove on down the valley we saw the new indus¬ 
trial centers, the fruit growers’ exchanges, the new, Spanish 
style houses, the finely kept groves, the banks, the cotton 
gins, the packing plants, stores of all kinds, the pumping 

153 


plants, irrigation ditches. From a small beginning in 1904 
the farmers have augmented their business until during 
the season of 1934-1935 daily 105 trucks moved north over 
the main highway, thundering north and eastward with 
agricultural produce to the ten cities where fruits are sold 
by the big jobbers: Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, New 
York, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pitts¬ 
burgh, St. Louis. 

In the production of grapefruit Florida leads by a wide 
margin. California harvests the biggest orange crop, but 
Texas and California are close rivals for second place in the 
production of grapefruit. Texas fruit is juicy, fine flavored, 
very fine. 

As we went through the valley the sun beat down with 
great heat. The further inland we got the less we felt the 
breeze from the Gulf. A rich tropical warmth lay upon 
the land. The highest temperature reported by the agricul¬ 
tural department is 104. Plenty hot. Sun rays poured down 
onto the green little knobs of fruit which would ripen along 
in September. Sometimes the fruit is on the trees all winter 
and is not harvested until blossoms come again in the spring. 

Occasionally the dreaded hurricanes of the tropics sweep 
up over the river valley bringing destruction. They are 
rare. Only once since the citrus culture was started in the 
valley, have they come. In early September of 1933, a hur¬ 
ricane blew and blew until at least 10,500 carloads of fruit 
lay in waste upon the ground. Trees were damaged, late 
cotton ruined, buildings destroyed. 


*54 


BORDER TOWNS 


P RESENTLY, nearing the coast, just below the 
southernmost end of Padre Island, we came into 
Brownsville, a border town directly opposite Mexi¬ 
can Matamoros, with the Rio Grande flowing between. The 
Rio Grande is an international stream, recently recognized 
by treaty as “navigable,” although in the dry season it shrinks 
to a mere thread, and can be forded by man at many points. 
Here, in its lower reaches, it separates two big nations, on 
the one side the highly industrialized, machine age Ameri¬ 
cans; on the other, within shouting distance, the age old, 
handcraft, Mexican Indians. The border is the wide line 
of the Rio Grande, a wide river bed, often with little water 
in it. Brownsville-Matamoros; American-Mexican, yet each 
town colored by the other, border towns, a confusion of 
cultures. 

The American town is the largest in the lower river 
valley, a coming metropolis with a population of 26,800, 
a railroad center, an international airport for the Pan- 
American airway making Mexico City and important points 
in the United States a few flying hours away. Now work 
is progressing on the tremendous $5,500,000 dredging and 
construction project, the harbor and ship canal that will 
do much to develop the city into an important center. In 


155 


Civil war times Brownsville was an active port of the 
Confederate states. During the periods from 1925 to 1930 
the water traffic was practically reduced to small fishing 
vessels. With the adoption of a resolution in congress in 
1930, a jetty protected canal, twenty-five feet deep, was 
commenced, a channel from Brownsville seventeen miles 
to the Gulf through the Brazos Santiago Pass, with harbor 
facilities for ocean-going vessels at both Brownsville and 
Port Isabel on the coast. It is estimated that steamship 
freight rates to New York will be about $20.00 a ton as 
compared with the present railroad rate of $31.00. 

But in Brownsville amid the thriving commercial develop¬ 
ment there is also a flavor of old Mexico, the hint of foreign 
neighbors. A miscellaneous town with many dark-skinned 
people. 

At Boca Chica, twenty-five miles east of the city, there 
is a fine Gulf beach with fine fishing. Six miles out of 
Brownsville is a natural wild palm grove, and in the town 
itself is a palm leaf hat factory where one can see the manu¬ 
facturing. 

But our hopes of taking the Gulf route south into old 
Mexico were soon dashed. The papers reported MEXICO 
AREA FLOODED. “Levees break. River at top of its 
banks. The Rio Grande at the Hidalgo gauge registered a 
depth of 13.9 feet. Cotton and tomato lands on the Mexi¬ 
can side flooded.” 

At the chamber of commerce a pretty little Mexican sec¬ 
retary, looking askance at our camp-stained clothes, said, 
“They don’t let hitch hikers into Mexico.” 

“But the roads? How are they?” we insisted, hoping all 
the time that the information in the paper would be con- 

156 


tradicted. The senorita shrugged her shoulders and referred 
us to an old-timer. 

“A man came through this morning, on horseback,” said 
the old-timer. 

This seemed to settle everything. The roads were quite 
impassable, mere sloughs of mud. The alternative route 
was by way of the newly constructed international high¬ 
way that crossed the river at Laredo. This we decided to 
take but first we spent a few hours in the Mexican bor¬ 
der town of Matamoros, got our first thrill from the at¬ 
mosphere that makes up a Mexican village, even a border 
village with all its taint of commercialism. 

We drove to the flood swollen river. The bridge between 
the nations was protected by the usual number of customs 
officials of both countries, important, military looking fel¬ 
lows. On the American side we chatted with the American 
fellows. It was a simple matter to cross for the day. We paid 
a small toll. 

“Is it safe to camp out on the Mexican side?” we asked. 
The American looked about to see if there were any Mexi¬ 
cans listening. 

“The country’s full of bandits,” he said. “With the gov¬ 
ernment unsettled, I wouldn’t advise it. But this is not 
official information,” he added. 

Immediately on the far side of the river we were hailed 
by a crowd of guides, old and young, shouting, “See the 
bull ring. See the old market.” They jumped onto the 
running board of our car, trying to exact from us the due 
of tourists. However, we shook ourselves free, and wan¬ 
dered for a short time about the central plaza with its 
cement and brick and wooden houses, every other one a 


157 


curio shop. Nearly every window in the town was barred 
with heavy iron grilling. By ourselves we found the road 
to the old market where, under the shade of canvas a motley 
display of Mexican and American goods was spread out 
in stalls. Colorful fruits, mangos, melons—cheap pottery, 
big straw hats, rope, baskets, colored handkerchiefs, all sold 
by dark-faced people. 

Planning a run deeper into old Mexico we did not spend 
much time in the border town, but crossed back over the 
international bridge, and set forth toward Laredo on the 
Militas road which closely parallels the river. It was a poor 
road, under construction. The land immediately touching 
the banks was not farmed with citrus. The houses were 
mere shacks, sticks plastered with mud for walls; thatched, 
peaked roofs. Finally we lost this road, and a jolly, swarthy 
old carter directed us back to the Laredo highway. What 
he said was in a gibberish of Mexican patois, but motioning 
with his ox whip he pointed the way. 

As we neared Laredo, the land was not so heavily de¬ 
veloped. The country was dry, covered with a scrub mes- 
quite growth, with opuntia cactus and maguey—cattle land. 
We spent the night, camping among this scrub growth. 
Then we entered Laredo— 


158 


Part Four 


ACROSS THE BORDER 













ROAD INTO MEXICO 


T HERE is something exhilarating about going over 
the border. One type of world is exchanged for 
another. New lands, new people, other traditions. 
We passed through the customs at the two Laredos which 
face each other over the Rio Grande. The twin towns have 
suddenly risen from comparative obscurity to a place in the 
tourist limelight. They stand now, not just one of many 
border towns, but as the border towns. The newly con¬ 
structed Pan-American highway has brought prosperity to 
their doorsteps. On the American bank of the international 
river lies Laredo, Texas. Immediately on the far side lies 
Mexican Nuevo Laredo, composed of pink, yellowish and 
white stucco houses, small cafes and the Mexican house of 
customs which sets blank up against the bridge. 

The moment we put foot on foreign soil we were sur¬ 
rounded and fairly swamped by dark-skinned officials, sol¬ 
diers and porters, who vented upon us a regular downpour 
of helpful suggestions, mostly in the liquid Spanish tongue. 
On this certain day there was but a handful of cars to pass 
through the customs, and consequently the whole force 
concentrated their favors upon us. A polite, blond Mexican, 
dressed in American khaki, and a paper jungle hat, extricated 

161 


us from the melee, and offered, in good English, to see us 
through. 

He saw us through the visaing of our “tourist cards” which 
can be secured from any Mexican consul.* 

The official that typed out our credentials asked us several 
questions. How long would we stay, and where would we 
go? 

“I see,” he added, “that you are artist. We have many fine 
scenes for make paintings in Mexico, but don’t make no sor¬ 
did pictures.” 

We asked our guide what was meant by sordid pictures. 

“Oh—weemin pickin’ lice off’n children. She gives a bad 
look to our country—you know.” 

The official now turned to us and said, “How much money 
you got?” 

“Why do you want to know?” we replied, not caring to 
tell how much money we had when the porters and the 
clerks were standing around within earshot. 

The interpreter stepped up at this moment and explained, 
“He just ask if you have money to pay. He don’t want no, 
what you call them, hitch hikers cornin’ in.” 

We named a nominal sum which satisfied the official. 

Now we went to the car bonding housed* While our 
license plates were checked, our drivers’ licenses and own¬ 
ers’ certificates ok’d, and considerable other red tape at¬ 
tended to, we sat in the bonding house and read a tourist 
pamphlet, f given to us by our guide—price fifty cents, in- 


* Price one dollar. Can be used in place of regular passports, 
t Rates: one dollar for ten days; one dollar and a quarter for twenty days; 
one dollar and fifty cents for thirty days, etc. 

t Guide to Mexico for Motorists. Published by Pan-American tourist bureau, 
Laredo, Texas. 


l62 


cidentally a good one. It describes briefly and to the point 
the rules of customhouses on both sides of the river, their 
shalt nots and demands; what one may and may not take 
into and out of Mexico. It warns people to be sure to bring 
back whatever they take in, old blown out tires and all, 
because if they don’t, duty will be assessed on the missing 
articles! As for cameras, it advises, take one by all means, 
but don’t take a gun. And if your camera is of foreign make, 
register it at the American customs, or you will have to pay 
a return duty. 

In the back of the guidebook are a few brief phrases in 
Spanish, how to order a meal, how to ask for car repairs, etc. 
If you don’t know any Spanish at all this brief list of sen¬ 
tences and a small dictionary will be of far greater practical 
value than a textbook which teaches you how to say in metic¬ 
ulously correct grammar such things as, “The sky is over¬ 
cast. How time does fly! A pretty little blue bird. The 
wonderful woman! To cough, I cough, I did cough, I will 
or shall cough.” All of which is of the greatest value should 
you happen to see a pretty little blue bird, or to catch a cold, 
but serves only to confuse if one wants to order a meal. A 
delightful thing about old Mexico is that the natives in the 
country speak no English. In most places (of course ex¬ 
cepting the tourist hotels, camps, and curio shops and res¬ 
taurants, which are planned in the bigger centers for Ameri¬ 
cans) one has to speak Spanish. But one can go a long way 
on a half dozen words and phrases, and a few polished 
gestures with the thumb, or with the hands. 

At the money changers we got our first Mexican money. 
We cashed a ten dollar American traveller’s check, and in 
return, we received a fat wad of paper, and a pocketful of 

i6 3 


coins. With so much cash we felt rich indeed. In the summer 
of ’35 the rate of exchange was very favorable for tourists. 
An American dollar was worth well over three pesos, or 
Mexican dollars. Money counting was easy. The Mexicans 
use the decimal system. A peso corresponds to our dollar, 
and is made up of one hundred centavos, or cents. We 
received paper money, and some silver pesos, with smaller 
change in copper and silver. It was reported that the govern¬ 
ment was calling in the silver, but silver pesos were by no 
means out of circulation. 

So, with our car bonded, and our pockets bulging with 
Mexican money, we reported for luggage inspection. Three 
peon fellows were already at this job, and like birds of prey, 
they picked our outfit to pieces, examined each article with 
laborious thoroughness and simple-minded curiosity, taking 
the tent from the trunk rack, hauling out in turn the cots, 
the soot blackened cook pans, the mosquito net, the canvas 
and paints, and the suit case from the bottom of the back 
compartment; examining the clothes in detail, and then 
when they had everything scattered, and our camp worn 
things lay meanly exposed on the roadside, they acted like 
all the king’s horses and all the king’s men with Humpty 
Dumpty. They did not know how to get us together again. 
Not that they weren’t willing, but they just couldn’t figure 
it out. For the packing of our small car was nothing short 
of a miracle which we alone understood how to perform. 

When at last everything was resettled, we enquired the 
price of all this attention. Our guide took off his paper 
jungle hat, replied with Spanish suaveness, “For this there 
ees no charge. It ees our pleasure to be of service, but—the 

164 


government, a salary she does not pay us, and so, if you 
weesh—” 

We tipped him a peso, gave small change to the porters, 
and set off into old Mexico, well satisfied. 


165 


ROAD TO MONTEREY 


W E drove gayly into Mexico, not thinking much 
about destination. Our immediate objective was 
Monterey. From there we would go to some 
small town, and camp. The road from Laredo set out over 
the wide scrub land, going like a serpent over the rolling 
plains, disappearing into the distance, and at first glance, 
seemed to be leading us into an undeveloped, uninhabited, 
barren waste of country. If we were to follow the road over 
its entire length, we would cross desert and tropics, climb 
terrific mountain heights, burrow into the very heart of 
Mexico. 

We were traversing that important transportation artery, 
the Pan-American highway which opens up the interior 
of the Latin-American republic, and links it to the great net¬ 
work of roads within the United States. Heretofore, the 
general conditions in Mexico have been anything but en¬ 
couraging to motorists. There has not been a continuous 
paved road between the American border and Mexico City, 
and although one could make it by car in the dry season, 
the way was beset with difficulties, and in the rainy season, 
the country was practically closed to motorists. The con¬ 
ditions at Matamoros had shown us that Mexico was now 
getting her share of floods, and even in normal times, no 

166 


dirt road could withstand the torrential rains that sweep 
over the land in July and August. However, it is now 
possible to drive clear into Mexico City, a distance of over 
900 miles from Laredo, on an all weather, all hard surface 
road, more than half its length said to be oil or asphalt, 
the remainder gravel. In the summer of ’33 it was com¬ 
pleted, save for a section in the mountainous region where 
road building is difficult, and the part we drove over, while 
somewhat narrower than the best American roads, was in 
good condition. 

For the first few miles the scenery was much like that at 
the Texan border, a tangle of mesquite, studded with green, 
spearlike clumps of maguey which gave way to acre after 
acre dominated by tree yuccas. The tree yucca is a strange 
looking growth. It is known botanically as the yucca abo- 
rcscens, the tree yucca or yucca palm. It grows a thick, 
club-like trunk and branches into green brush-like heads, 
thrust ten to twenty feet into the air. In June it bears one or 
two clusters of rich white flowers, dropping downward in 
the sensual manner of tropical blooms. The plants stand 
well apart from each other, forming thin forests. 

Although, at the border, we had sensed a distinct break 
between two cultures, now, under way, we were reminded 
of change only by the road signs which were written in Span¬ 
ish. We translated them by their location. Vado —dip. Alto 
—stop. Camino sinuoso —winding road. Tome su derecho — 
keep to the right. Curva inversa —double curve. The 
country, for the first few miles, was so empty that the signs 
stood out like solitary labels, saying, “This is Mexico.” But 
gradually, the fact that we were on foreign soil became more 
and more apparent. Although the land here was not com- 

167 


mercially developed, there were a few orange groves, some 
cattle; and the few houses, the few people and in particular 
their costumes and their method of transportation bespoke 
another race. 

There was some small amount of auto traffic. Several 
policemen rode by upon motorcycles, and sometimes a bus 
would honk loudly and whiz past us; but more often we 
would pass the bus which driver and passengers alike were 
trying to get started, for most of the motor transports were 
of ancient style. We noticed that animals, the burro, ox, 
bull and horse, were the chief burden bearers and trans¬ 
portation units of the country. Although some peons own 
Mexican ponies, by far the greater number ride upon the 
humble backs of burros, and a fine picture they make, the 
rider perched carelessly at a jaunty angle far back on the 
rump of the small animal, the man’s legs encased in white 
cotton trousers and dangling almost in the dust. If there 
is only one mount in the family, wife walks, husband rides. 
That is the custom in Mexico. 

It has often been said that here the burro is the poor man’s 
horse. And so it seems, for any day one can see the little 
mousy creatures grazing loose by the roadside, or progressing 
in a leisurely fashion along the highways, singly or in pack 
trains, doing the work of the poor man. They carry heavy 
loads. It is a common sight to see one laden with two big 
panniers of fruit strapped one on either side of wooden pack 
saddles, the master balancing precariously near the tail end. 
Perhaps still more frequently the animals will be seen with 
faggots lashed to their rotund bodies, making them look like 
solid barrels. This load leaves no room for a rider. Still 
other burros are to be seen buried under tremendous loads 

168 



If there is only one mount in the family, 
wife walhj, husband rides. That is the cus¬ 
tom in Mexico. 


















of cornstalks, nothing showing but the tips of their noses, 
making it appear that the shocks of green fodder are wrig¬ 
gling along, unaided. 

Seemingly, the beasts thrive on hard work and scant 
feed. They are stubborn and their dispositions evidently 
save them from overexertion. They are, for the most part, 
fat and sturdy. 

The more wealthy farmers take their produce to market 
in lumbering ox carts, often drawn by yoked bulls. The 
manner of yoking the animals is curious. A cross piece is 
lashed tightly to the back of the horns, so that the burden of 
pulling falls upon the neck rather than upon the shoulder, 
and the beasts plod along with lowered heads. This is the 
Spanish method, used since early times in Latin America. 

The towns between Laredo and Monterey, a distance of 
one hundred and forty-six miles, are few in number and 
quaint and unpretentious in appearance. The houses have 
whitewashed mud walls, and thatched roofs, or are fashioned 
entirely of thatch. The highway is yet new and the country 
little populated, but there is no need to worry about running 
out of gasoline. Already, there are several stations with 
American gas pumps. They are manned by country fellows 
who do not jump to wipe the wind shield, check the oil, and 
fill your radiator, except by special request. They sell fuel 
at so much a litre. The metric system is used everywhere in 
Mexico and you cannot buy gas by the gallon. It is a bit 
disconcerting at first to order ten litres, and find that they 
make little or no impression upon your gauge. After a bit 
you will remember that it takes nearly four litres to equal 
one of our gallons. A litre is just a fraction more than our 
quart. 


Mexican cafes are gay and colorful. There are several en 
route between Laredo and Monterey. We lunched at one. 
The building was of adobe, with whitewashed walls and 
floors of tile. Two dark-faced musicians dressed in Spanish 
costumes played plaintive Mexican tunes on guitars, for the 
entertainment of guests. The appearance of the customers 
in the place was quite surprising and alarming. They fairly 
bristled with pistols and guns. These heavily-armed natives 
were picturesque, wearing big sombreros, hips slung with 
cartridge belts, but their presence was far from reassuring. 
Quite the contrary. We remembered stories of bandits, and 
thought that these fellows looked mighty bandit-like. How¬ 
ever, they paid little attention to us, and we soon found that 
all Mexicans were most friendly and courteous to Americans. 

Furthermore, a tourist is a tourist the world over, treated 
circumspectly and politely, and charged accordingly. A 
tourist gets good service and pays for it. 

At this particular cafe there was no menu card. The 
waiter asked us what we wanted, in Spanish. After a pro¬ 
longed consultation of our phrase book we got fried chicken, 
chile sauce, potatoes, a paste of squashed beans (a great 
favorite with Mexicans), tomato salad, and tortillas, the flat, 
unleavened corn bread of Mexico. For desert, honey candy. 
A very good meal. The cost was about the same as it would 
have been in a restaurant of the same class in the states, in 
spite of the favorable rate of money exchange. 

About two weeks later we returned to this same restaurant 
to try a little experiment. We had learned to say, “Que tiene 
usted listo?” 

To this Spanish phrase the waiter replied with a torrent 
of suggestions. Of course he spoke so fast that we understood 


172 


nothing of what he said. However, we were sure of one 
thing. We did not want chicken. We had had no other 
meat since entering the country. So we picked out the item 
that sounded least like chicken, and repeated it. In a few 
minutes the waiter returned with the order. Two plates of 
fried chicken! But the bill was one peso less, all on account 
of our appearing to know Spanish. 

After lunch we began to think about making camp. In 
Mexico, land was even more “wide open” than in Texas. 
Mile after mile of the country was unfenced; but one thing 
and another made us hesitate. It was not so much the idea 
that the Mexicans packed six shooters, or, moreover, the 
idea of bandits, but rather the sight of a smaller kind of life 
that discouraged us. In places the highway was dotted with 
large centipedes which were migrating across the pavement. 
The wormlike, many footed creatures were every bit of four 
and six inches long, and good crawlers. Their bite, though 
not often fatal, is said to make people ill. 

As we stopped to look at the centipedes, we saw a taran¬ 
tula which was walking ponderously along on his eight 
hairy legs. We decided to capture him, and while Nils went 
to the car to get a tin can, I poked a stick at him. He was as 
big as many of the sand crabs that lived on Padre Island, and 
he was not in the least afraid of the stick, or of me. He came 
onward, slowly moving his fat, black, hairy body forward, 
ready to jump to the attack if need be. He had me in slow 
retreat, by the time that Nils returned with the can. Hold¬ 
ing the can in front of the spider, Nils encouraged him to 
jump and bite, as tarantulas do. This fellow gave a spring 
and landed plump in the can. He crouched in the bottom, 
a bit scared and surprised. He watched us intently with his 


173 


beady eyes, and we could see his two large, claw-like fangs 
which were attached to the front of the upper jaw. The bite 
of this spider will make a person very ill, and cause a leg or 
arm to swell badly, but is not usually fatal. According to an 
old Italian superstition, the bite causes tarantism, or fits of 
dancing. 

With our spider safely imprisoned, we set forth once more. 

As we drove onward, the great rocky mountains of the 
Sierra Madre rose bigger and bigger, dominating the whole 
countryside with their beauty and grandeur, and presently 
we found ourselves going upward and upward over the ser¬ 
pentine road at Mamulique pass, a spectacular drive. Night 
came suddenly upon us, and now there was nothing to do 
but drive on into the city, because, in the dark, we pictured 
the whole ground to be crawling with centipedes and black 
tarantulas. Not a pleasant place to pitch a tent. So, we de¬ 
cided to spend one night indoors, the first since the trip 
began. Presently we saw lights winking out in the darkness, 
and we came to the outskirts of Monterey, King of the Moun¬ 
tains. It is aptly named, lying as it does, in a valley 1,758 
feet above sea level, completely surrounded by mountains. 

There is a selection of good hotels in Monterey, but we 
stopped before entering far into the city, at a tourist court 
with modern stucco camp houses, and a neat, palm decorated 
yard. The price was six pesos for a double room, slightly 
cheaper than a similar camp in the United States. And 
although we found sleeping indoors stuffy, after living in a 
tent, there were advantages. There was a good shower bath. 
At the same time we were able to investigate more thor- 
roughly the matter of bandits. 

When we went to pay our room rent, we showed our ta- 


174 


rantula to the proprietor and several Mexicans lounging 
about in the office. 

“Where did you get that?” they exclaimed, looking at 
the spider in awe. When we replied, “A short distance down 
the road,” they all expressed surprise and declared that it 
was the first time that they had ever seen a tarantula in all 
their lives. 

That evening we took a trip to town. Hearing a deep 
throated whistle like an ocean liner, we followed the sound 
to the railroad station which proved to be an uninteresting 
place, quite filled with disembarking soldiers. Then we came 
upon a long boulevard which seemed to be the center of the 
town, but was in reality a side concourse. It was brightly 
lighted with electric street lamps, and lined with small cafes 
and bar rooms, and small stores. We strolled along mingling 
with the crowd of coatless young Mexican men escorting 
senoritas, and dark, mustachioed old men. People were 
blocking the entrance of a moving picture house, trying to 
get seats, and drifting in and out of cafes. The sidewalks 
were lined with stone benches, flanked with small booths 
where fruits, Mexican candy (a great deal of which is candied 
fruit and vegetables, watermelon, squash rind, etc.), coconut 
and ice cream were offered by peddlers. The small stores 
seemed to stay open indefinitely. The proprietors, plump 
dark men and women, sat in the doorways watching the 
people. They sold everything from old iron to shoe strings. 

We entered a cafe where a shining American coffee 
steamer was puffing merrily. We ordered enchiladas, the 
famous Mexican dish made of tortillas, wrapped around 
spiced meat, and served with chile sauce, and usually topped 
off with a poached egg. In the same restaurant were two 

175 


husky, khaki clad American boys, chatting with two very 
small, black eyed, Mexican senoritas who were heavily pow¬ 
dered to make themselves look white. Since the girls were 
of the peon class, and therefore very dark skinned, the effect 
of the white powder was ghostly. The American boys ap¬ 
parently thought the girls were a novelty. But the most 
amusing part was the amount of talk that went on. The 
girls seemed to understand no English except the word yes, 
which they repeated shyly, at intervals, in reply to the stories 
that the boys were telling them with great animation. 

Suddenly there was a commotion outside, and we all rose 
from our seats to watch two truck loads of Mexican youths 
go swinging past. The young fellows were gesticulating 
and shouting. 

“Viva Calles! Viva Calles!” they yelled, making a great 
din, cheering the “strong man of Mexico.” We were to hear 
more of politics later. 

Monterey is a commercial city. It is the capital of the state 
of Nuevo Leon, has a population of 165,000 people. The 
Montereyans boast that their city fosters the largest indus¬ 
trial enterprises in the country. They have, among other 
things, a factory where a good grade of commercial glass is 
made; and a brewery where, by the way, visitors are treated 
to all the beer that they can drink, free, for the asking. There 
is also a liquor store where a customer is expected to sample 
all the different kinds of Mexican liquors, and the Americans 
seem to forget their hard and fast rule of “never mix your 
drinks.” The result is that they are soon in a generous mood, 
and the proprietor does a large volume of business in bottled 
goods. 

But the liquor business, and the industrial development 

176 


are not the first aspects that strike the eye of the tourist. The 
city has a quaint, old world atmosphere, is reminiscent of 
Spanish colonial days. Monterey is ancient, was settled in 
1596 by Diego de Montemayor. The next morning we dis¬ 
covered the better part of town where the cathedral, the 
hotels, the curio shops, better restaurants, and government 
buildings are located, all on charming squares planted with 
a luxuriant growth of palms and tropical flowers with big 
luscious leaves. Here, the streets are so narrow that they are 
marked off into one way traffic lanes. The sidewalks are 
paved with cement, and, in many places, decorated with 
small squares, highly incised with geometric designs. 

We spent the greater part of our time in the markets. 
There is one in the open air, similar in most respects to the 
street mart at Matamoros, very much fly infested, but quaint. 
Then, on the outskirts of the city, on a hilly street which 
begins where a foot and burro bridge leaves off, there is a 
regular junk market. Burros come and go from the main 
city. The proprietors sit on the ground beside their small 
stalls, or spread their wares on a piece of cloth, and all in the 
world they have to sell are bits of old iron, wheels, and 
broken odds and ends. 

There is also a more modern, sanitary municipal market, 
housed in a large building where some good baskets and 
pottery can be bought as well as food and other household 
necessities. The curio shops are innumerable, both good and 
poor, expensive and otherwise. In the windows are displayed 
everything from cheap mementoes to fine crafts. 

There are many things for Americans to buy. The Mexi¬ 
cans are famous for their handicrafts. They are fine potters, 
fine makers of baskets, leather workers, weavers of cloth and 


177 


wood carvers. Some of the best serapes are made at the 
neighboring town of Saltillo, but the pottery, bubble glass, 
and much of the basketry is brought from the more southern 
states. The pottery is both beautiful and useful. The cheap¬ 
est grade is usually partially glazed; is ornamental in a very 
peasant manner, but chips easily. The better grade is durable, 
highly glazed, and very beautifully decorated. There are 
tea sets made in squared forms, the cups with daintily cor¬ 
nered lips and indented deep saucers, the teapots tall, long 
spouted and angular, admirably suited to either a modern 
apartment or a country home. The better pottery is designed 
with hand painted scenes typically Mexican, a donkey, a 
water carrier, a pig, a thatch house, ably executed with a few 
simple brush strokes, masterpieces of peasant art. Then 
there are dinner plates or tea plates of the same variety, and 
flower bowls, and tiles. Each separate piece is painted with 
a different design. A Mexican artist never repeats himself. 

The bubble glass is familiar to most housewives of today; 
amber, sea green, deep blue tumblers and pitchers of all 
sizes and shapes. Fragile but lovely, it is imported in great 
quantities into the States. In Mexico one can pick up un¬ 
usual combinations such as amazingly tall carafes with tiny 
cordial glasses. 

The basketry is a joy to a gardener, or, for that matter, to 
any basket fancier. They are woven in all sizes and shapes, 
decorated or plain. Nice sturdy market baskets are made all 
over Mexico, and used every day by the peons to carry fruits 
and eggs and vegetables. They are fashioned of strips of wil¬ 
low or bamboo cane and bark of trees. They are strong, make 
fine wood baskets, and are unbelievably cheap. The deco¬ 
rated weaves are mostly brought from the south. There are 

178 


big copious cylinders of baskets made of split bamboo, shiny 
and smooth; baskets with covers that made wonderful pic¬ 
nic carryalls. These are decorated with simple colored de¬ 
signs. 

The hand tooled leather work makes useful gifts. The 
sandals are built for foot comfort, peasant and bizarre. The 
list of novelties is quite endless, clay and wax fruits, painted 
gourds, lacquered trays, wooden inlays in many colors, beau¬ 
tifully executed wooden figures. 

The price of all this delightful peasant art is low. The 
tourist saves duty and freight. Of course much depends 
upon the rate of exchange. But when the American dollar 
will buy several pesos, purchases are very cheap. 

From Monterey there are several side trips. The Horse 
Tail falls are of scenic beauty. In the city the bishop’s palace 
and the old cathedral are of historic interest. And there is 
much fun to be had just wandering along the quaint streets 
and in and out of the markets. But we were looking for a 
smaller town. 

We asked the advice of an American merchant. This 
fellow was much disturbed when we spoke about camping. 

“It is not safe yet, in Mexico,” he insisted. “The country 
is unsettled politically. The police system is not perfected. 
Bandits hide out in the hills beyond the control of law. But 
if you must camp, go and see Dr. Ferguson, a Texan who 
has residence at Linares. Maybe he will arrange it so that 
you can put up your tent on his place. Linares is eighty-one 
miles south of here, on the Pan-American highway. You can 
get plenty of models there for painting. But don’t go paint¬ 
ing any sordid pictures! You’ll get in trouble.” 

179 


We asked why all this fuss about sordid pictures. 

“Well, it seems some American painted a picture of a 
Mexican woman picking lice off her child, and the officials 
were very upset. Fm told they destroyed his painting. Now, 
your pictures will also have to be passed by the customs’ 
officials. Don’t paint pictures of people delousing!” 

We set forth for Linares, well armed with advice. We 
were skeptical about the fears of the merchant for our safety, 
but when all was said and done, we were glad that we went 
to Linares, for two reasons. Not for safety, but because it 
was of great advantage to know someone who had been 
living in the country for a long time, and because the 
weather, which so far had been remarkably bright and clear, 
changed. 


180 


ON THE EDGE OF THE TROPICS 


W E arrived at Linares on a blisteringly hot day. 

Although we were not quite in the real tropics, 
we were on the border, as the weather proved. 
A matter of about one hundred miles further south, the 
Tropic of Cancer cuts across Mexico, just outside the city of 
Victoria, and there the true tropics begin. But at Linares 
it was very hot. 

On the outskirts of the town the paved highway gave way 
to narrow dirt roads, lined with one-storied adobe and stucco 
houses set flush upon the streets. The town is small, and we 
came quickly to the shady, tree-planted plaza, for like most 
Mexican towns it was planned about a central square. A 
sidewalk and a road bordered the square, and a sprinkling 
of electric light lamp-poles showed that the town was mod¬ 
ernized. But there was a foreign air about the shops, the 
dingy hotel, the cafes with doors wide open on the streets. 
On the other hand, two large municipal buildings that faced 
the plaza were reminiscent of American town halls. But the 
people were definitely foreign, and of the several dark faced 
peons lounging on the street corners, none of them spoke 
English. It presently turned out that Dr. Ferguson was the 
only American resident in town. However, on mention of 
his name, everyone seemed to know where the Texan doctor 

181 


lived. His home was pointed out to us, just off the plaza, and 
as we stepped into his tall ceilinged, adobe office we felt im¬ 
mediately cool. Adobe makes the coolest kind of walls, per¬ 
fect for hot climates. 

We had not been in Linares many minutes before the 
doctor was taking us to his country hacienda. He explained 
that he was then living in town, and graciously offered to 
place his country house at our disposal. This was, of course, 
more than campers wanted, and so we said we would not 
consider having him open the house. All we required was a 
bit of open land on which to pitch our tent. 

“Maybe, when you see the porch, you will want to sleep 
there,” said the doctor. “Remember, the rains are due.” 

At this time rains did not mean to us more than New 
England showers, but we soon learned the wisdom of the 
doctor’s suggestion. 

The house was on the edge of town, set deep within a 
tropical garden, and completely surrounded by a high fence. 
When we arrived at the gateway, a bandy legged old Mexi¬ 
can came running out of a grove of banana palms, carrying 
a large machete in his hands. He was dressed in an old shirt 
and a pair of blue jeans so faded as to have taken on the 
color of a light blue sky in summer. Scanty long hairs 
sprouted out like neglected weeds from his chin which was 
shaded by an enormous straw sombrero, and his feet, as 
brown as the soil, were encased in leather sandals. 

“That is Cucoo,” said the doctor. “He guards the place, 
at night.” We never did quite catch the pronunciation of 
the old man’s nickname, but he always answered to Cucoo, 
and we let it go at that. He was small in stature, and his 
body was bent and gnarled with rheumatism, but that he 

182 


was still a hardy fellow was shown by the strength with 
which he pushed open the big gate to let us pass. Then he 
went off with his machete among the banana palms. 

We drove on up to the house which was a large, one¬ 
storied adobe building, plastered with cement, and com¬ 
pletely surrounded by a wide cement porch that was built 
high above the ground, and decorated with a border of pot¬ 
ted ferns. 

“Now,” said the doctor, “one of my sons stays here at 
night. He sleeps on the east side of the porch. I am sure 
that he will be glad to interpret for you if you need him. 
Cucoo sleeps here, in front, and he will be your bodyguard,” 
added the doctor smiling. “You are welcome to set up your 
cots anywhere you please.” 

This seemed an ideal arrangement, and before nightfall 
we had our two cots set up on the porch under our mosquito 
net, and our cook stove on the cement floor. So now, with 
our camp made up on a porch, and a bodyguard, and an in¬ 
terpreter and friend, we began our stay in Mexico. 

From our cots we could see the luxuriant growth of the 
garden, banana palms budding with sensual flowers, huge 
avocado trees, as big as eastern oaks, with the fruit hanging 
green upon the branches, fig trees with the fruit already 
ripe, peach trees dropping luscious pink and yellow peaches 
onto the ground, orange trees, and brilliant colored flowers. 
This tropical growth was quite in contrast to the barren, 
semi-arid land immediately outside of Linares, and was 
made possible only by irrigation. Directly behind the doc¬ 
tor’s house flowed the acequia madre, the mother ditch, 
which brought water from a near by river. 

After dark the doctor’s son Charles came walking up the 

183 


path, and we had a long chat with him before we all turned 
in on our respective sides of the porch. Cucoo had spread 
out a thin blanket and quilt on the cement floor. He pre¬ 
ferred this couch to a real bed which the doctor had given 
him. He was now settled on an old rocker with the large 
and formidable machete clutched in his old earthen hands. 
He rocked back and forth, far into the night, occasionally 
spitting, but making no other sound. We fell asleep, only 
to awaken and hear the strange night disturbances of warm 
countries. At first all was as silent as the grave, save for the 
noise of locusts and tree toads which seemed to go on eter¬ 
nally. Then suddenly, a dog barked, several others took up 
the cry, until the whole neighborhood of dogs was aroused 
to barking and quarreling. Whereupon a burro gave vent 
to a terrifying bray, roosters crowed, and here and there 
parrakeets and other birds stirred, and screeched. Then, 
suddenly, all was again reduced to silence, save for the snor¬ 
ing of Cucoo who had at last curled up on his pallet, like 
an old faithful dog. 

Thus we spent our first night at Linares, and in the morn¬ 
ing when we awoke, the sun was well up, and Charles was 
already gone, and Cucoo was observing us from a discreet 
distance. When he saw that we were up and dressed he 
came shuffling onto the porch and said “Agua? Agua?” 

Fortunately we knew that this word meant water, and we 
handed him a pail, and said, “Si, Si. Agua. Gracias.” This 
tickled his sense of humor, and off he went, chuckling, to 
the well, and by the time we had our coffee boiling, he was 
back with a brimming pail of spring water. Then he left 
us, to carry out his duties for the day. One of Cucoo’s chores 
was to care for the chickens of which there were a consider- 

184 


able number. In the absence of the doctor and his family, 
several hens had moved in to live on the porch. One old 
grey fowl spent the better part of her days scrambling up 
onto our cots and trying to lay an egg before we chased her 
away. Caught in the act, she would fly off, screaming in¬ 
dignantly, and like as not drop her egg indolently on the 
cement porch. 

Cucoo was very nice to the chickens, and talked to them 
more than he did to human beings. His particular friend 
was an old grey goose which had been injured in some 
fashion when he was a gosling and could not walk about 
without holding his neck at a strained angle to one side of 
his body. He was a defenseless thing, could not get much 
food for himself in the face of the active chickens, and 
would have made easy prey for any wandering cat or dog. 
Cucoo had taken him in charge. He fed him, watched over 
him, and at night he would lift him up the steps, and set 
him down on an old burlap bag. In answer to all this the 
lame goose would make little satisfied whimpering noises 
which sometimes went on far into the late hours. 

One time we helped the goose up onto the porch when 
Cucoo was away among the banana palms. Soon Cucoo 
came looking for his feathered friend. He went wandering 
disconsolately around, calling softly, and getting no answer. 
We tried to tell him that the goose was safely put to bed, 
but he did not understand until Nils said, “Quack quack.” 
Whereupon he followed us to the porch, and fairly beamed 
with gratitude. 

One thing that seemed to amuse him no end, was that 
we could neither speak nor understand his native tongue. I 
suppose he thought that we were very uneducated. 

185 


In the afternoon he would come to us and say “Bano?” 
He was immensely amused when we looked the word up in 
the dictionary and replied. “Si. Si. Bano. Gracias.” Then 
he went off to the well to draw water for our baths which 
we had beside the irrigation ditch. The doctor’s sons had 
rigged up an ingenious arrangement, a big metal drum with 
a shower screen in the bottom. This drum was filled with 
water, and hoisted up onto the limb of a tree. Then the 
person about to bathe pulled a string and let the water 
trickle down over his body in splendid fashion. 

After our first bath, we gave Cucoo a peso. He was as 
delighted as a child with the money. But when we told the 
doctor about it, he said that Cucoo would now probably 
disappear. 

“But why?” we wanted to know. 

“Well,” said the doctor, “he has a great fondness for mes¬ 
cal which is a potent extract from the century plant. A 
quart may be had for a peso, and a quart would put anyone 
under the table.” 

And that brings up Cucoo’s one bad habit. He loved 
mescal. As often as he got a peso, so the story goes, he 
would land under someone’s table. Yet, he was a man of 
great dignity, and as the doctor said, he would not be bossed 
for money or no. How old he was, nobody knew, but some 
idea may be had from the fact that he fought against Maxi¬ 
milian. What he did in the way of taking care of the chick¬ 
ens and hoeing the garden, he did for his room and board, 
and after his own fashion. If he were told to do a thing in 
a certain way at a certain time, he would go off and leave 
it undone. But left to his own devices, he took good care 
of the place, and was devoted to the doctor. Once, when he 

186 


had had too much mescal, he fought for his master, on pro¬ 
vocation of a fancied insult. 

However, he must have been saving his pesos for one 
grand bust, because he was cold sober while we were there, 
and drew our water and did our errands regularly. He 
had voluntarily taken us in charge, along with the chickens 
and the goose, and he made our comfort one of his responsi¬ 
bilities, as long as we were in Linares. 


187 


TO MARKET 


D IRECTLY after our arrival at Linares, the doctor’s 
prophecy came true. The clouds which had 
formed a beautiful background for the Sierra 
Madre mountains, suddenly drifted over the sun, and 
pressed down upon the town, and dissolved into such a 
downpour of rain that the streets became like rivers and 
house gutters spouted like burst mains. We had heard 
much about the rainy season in Mexico, how, in high alti¬ 
tude Mexico City, it rains during the months of July and 
August for a short period each afternoon. Now at Linares 
the situation was quite the reverse. It rained all except for a 
short period each afternoon. It rained as we had never 
seen it rain before. It rained until the ground was sodden 
and every unpaved street was just a slough of mud. Water 
fell in sheets down in front of the porch, and it was only 
because the porch was very wide that we kept dry at all. 
We often thought of how life would have been in a tent. 
It rained and rained, dismally, for ten days and ten nights, 
and then, as suddenly as they had come, the clouds gathered 
themselves together again, and rose up in soft fluffy mounds 
behind the mountains, and there they stayed, threatening 
to descend at short notice. During the wet spell, the mos¬ 
quitoes got worse. Fortunately they did not bother us 

188 


much in the day time. We inspected several of the night 
fliers, and about every fourth one had the characteristics 
of malarial carriers. 

“Do many people, here, have malaria?” we asked Charles. 

“Well, / have,” he said, and thereafter we dosed regu¬ 
larly with capsules of quinine bought at the druggeria in 
town. 

During the rainy period, when the clouds would scour 
away for an hour or so in the afternoon, we would go to 
market, and buy our food supplies. We had with us a small 
amount of American canned goods which we supplemented 
with commodities from the Mexican market. We would 
drive slowly up through the lanes, lurching over washed- 
out ruts, and dodging pigs which disputed the right of way 
with our car. Pigs are inevitable in Mexico, and in the rainy 
season they use the roads for wallows. Grunting lazily, 
they make deep holes for themselves, and are complacent 
about their position, seeming to feel that possession is nine 
tenths of the law. And so it is, when a sow weighs some 
three hundred pounds. 

As we reached the town proper we noted evidence of 
street paving in some of the more prosperous districts, but 
the streets were now all washed out, and many of the fine 
walls which were built around the town houses were crum¬ 
bling. In Linares we never saw anyone repairing anything 
that fell down. It is not that the town lacks improvements. 
It has a good electric light plant, and a fine water system 
where water is purified with the most modern equipment 
that can be purchased in the United States. In the midst 
of all the improvements, the peons ride by in slow moving 
ox carts or on the rumps of burros, going merrily about 

189 


their business, unmindful of pigs wallowing in the roads, 
and flies as thick as bees at honey. 

We soon caught on to their way of leisure, and progressing 
slowly we would make our way to the plaza, honking 
loudly at every corner, as Mexicans do. The streets are, 
for the most part, narrow, and the corners sharp, making 
vision for motorists poor. The shops are built on the streets, 
like the houses, without pretense of entranceway, porch or 
steps. 

On the plaza we stopped at the drtiggeria where one may 
buy—drugs. The druggeria at Linares is not a quick lunch, 
soda fountain and catch-me-all for dry goods, cosmetics, 
books and stationery, like the American drug store. After 
buying quinine we went to the panaderia where bread and 
pastry are sold. Mexican baker’s bread is good, and at 
Linares it was kept in a sanitary shop. Sweet breads are the 
center of attraction. They are shaped like the heads of mush¬ 
rooms, and are soft to the bite, sugary to the taste. They 
come in all sizes from small buns to large loaves as big as 
luncheon plates. 

We bought the rest of our food supplies at the general 
market which is housed in a hall recently built for the pur¬ 
pose. There was a time, not long ago, when the market 
at Linares was an out-of-doors affair like that at Matamoros. 
Before the railroad came and changed the life of the coun¬ 
try, one of the big fairs of the year was held here. People 
came from far and near to trade, after the manner of old 
times. All Indians and Mexicans are, by nature, traders. 
But times have changed, for better or for worse, depend¬ 
ing upon how one looks at things, and the market caters 
to a smaller public, is housed in a fine building, is included 

190 


in the march of progress. However, an old dog is not taught 
new tricks overnight. The culture of Mexico is deep rooted. 
The people have their own ways of getting business done, 
an easy, happy-go-lucky way, not much concerned with 
progress. 

As a sanitation minded American tourist enters such a 
market as the one at Linares, he is at first struck by a 
superficial fact: flies usually enjoy cheese and other foods 
before the buyer. But if the tourist can stand a few flies, 
he will enjoy the market; and if he buys with sanitation in 
mind, fruits and vegetables to be peeled, things to be boiled, 
he need not worry about typhoid, and will probably find 
the buying fun, and get a little nearer to the true quality 
of the people. 

Any market in Mexico is worth seeing, colorful, and 
quaint. At Linares the proprietors of the different stores 
are established in booths where they display their wares. 
The merchants do not specialize. Each one sells everything 
from homemade baskets to live chickens. Poultry is brought 
to market still feathered and kicking. You can see farmers 
coming with produce, straight from the soil, live chickens 
squawking on the backs of burros which also carry the 
master, panniers of fruit, baskets of vegetables. The peons 
trade these things for commodities such as sugar, tobacco, 
and flour or take payment in cash. 

Our first purchase was a husky basket to carry our mar¬ 
keting, and, as Cucoo’s hen took to laying eggs in it, in 
preference to on our cots, it served a double purpose. 

The food in a Mexican market is little different in variety 
from that in an American grocery store. Beans are sold in 
great quantities. So is cornmeal. But it is the Mexican way 

191 


of fixing foods that makes their bill-of-fares so different 
from ours. 

Living was cheap at Linares. A good brand of cigarettes 
could be had at three cents a package. Eggs were eighteen 
cents a dozen. Corn, a cent an ear. Bananas, eight cents 
a dozen. A kilo of potatoes, four cents. A kilo of coffee, 
thirty-eight cents. And a kilo of coffee was more coffee 
than we could use in weeks, because a kilo is over two 
pounds. The coffee was ground before our eyes as it used 
to be in American country stores. It was slightly bitter in 
taste, but not bad for a camping coffee. 

Goat’s milk is used everywhere in Mexico, but we did 
without milk, butter, and fresh meat for sanitary reasons. 
For lard, we substituted a Mexican canned vegetable fat, 
much like American crisco. 

Food stuffs were cheap in Linares, and although the price 
of staples varied some from day to day, the amount was 
not usually worth haggling over. However, the Mexican 
peons did not share our scruples, and they had a good deal 
of bargaining to do before a purchase was concluded. Bar¬ 
ter is with Mexicans an instinct. Asking price is rarely 
selling price. 

At the market we purchased some cereal bowls. We ex¬ 
amined them with considerable care, after the manner of 
the country. Then, we enquired, “Cuanto?” How much? 

The merchant replied, “Ten centavos.” 

Well, it happened that one of the bowls had been marked 
by the forgetful proprietor, eight centavos. 

After a moment’s thought we said, “Demasiado.” Too 
much. 

Thereupon, the fellow let us have them at eight centavos 


192 


each, and I don’t doubt that the country people, more adept 
at haggling than we, got them even cheaper. 

All of our marketing was done in monosyllables, aided 
by finger pointing. We knew how to name the commodi¬ 
ties such as potatoes, sugar, eggs, and corn. We could in¬ 
tersperse a few phrases such as cuanto, how much; es muy 
caro, it is too dear; mas grande, larger; demasiada chiquita, 
too small. We knew how to count from one to one hun¬ 
dred, and with a little gesturing, we got on very well. 

After marketing we would drive home and present the 
beaming Cucoo with a three cent package of cigarettes which 
for him was a luxury. He usually rolled his own. Then, 
if it was not raining we would walk up the river bank 
where the neighbors kept cows, and gather mushrooms to 
eke out our diet. The wet weather brought up a fine crop 
of champignons which were just like the variety that grow 
in New England cow pastures. The other species, however, 
looked different, and we were afraid to sample them. 

Of green food we had plenty. The doctor gave us all 
the beet tops and spinach we could eat, and a variety of 
Mexican greens that grew in his garden. Cucoo would often 
bring us fruit, handfuls of peaches and figs. 

In late afternoon we would stop on the plaza to have a 
glass of beer. There is much to be said in favor of this 
beverage in hot countries. In the first place it is relaxing 
to one not used to the heat, and in the second place it makes 
one sweat, which is good for one in this climate. 

The most popular drinks in Nuevo Leon are beer and 
mescal. Mescal, Cucoo’s favorite drink, is derived from the 
maguey, a century plant, and is said to be the purest drink 
in Mexico. It is pure and potent. It is a colorless liquid, 


193 


tastes strongly of bark or peth and roots—is not at all sweet 
but rather nutty and earthy in flavor. A strange taste. 
Orange peels cut the acridness of it and make it more 
palatable to Americans, but Mexicans prefer it straight. 

Throughout the countryside the maguey grows wild, but 
for commercial uses it is cultivated, and along the high¬ 
way one will often pass plantations. The maguey is decora¬ 
tive in appearance. The leaves are long, spearlike, thick and 
succulent, and grow out from the core of the plant some¬ 
what like the leaves of a pineapple. They are a delicate 
green in color. Sometimes one may see piles of the big, 
turnip-like stumps of these plants after the leaves have 
been cut away. It is from these stumps or cores that the 
drink is made. 

Mescal is rather too strong for a daytime drink, and 
when we sat on the plaza with the Texan doctor, it was 
beer that we would take. We liked to watch the life of 
the town from the vantage point of a corner cafe. There 
was much to see. For one thing we saw many American 
Rotarians going south to a convention in Mexico City. 
From all accounts they had a hard trip because the road 
was washed out in the high passes, but they went just the 
same, in some cases having to put their cars on trains to get 
through. 

One day while we were sitting on the plaza, a guard of 
soldiers came rushing up to the government buildings, took 
charge of the place and sent the office girls home. 

“What is that all about?” we asked the doctor. 

“Oh—the mayor is scared. He thinks another bunch of 
rebels is trying to put him out of office. The truth of the 


194 


matter is that last night a drunken fellow threatened him. 
Said that he was gathering together all the mayor’s enemies 
to shoot the place up.” 

“Do you think anything will happen?” 

The doctor shrugged. “No telling. Things are happen¬ 
ing all the time. Maybe we’ll see some action.” But even 
though we sat there for some time, nothing did happen, and 
the next day the soldiers were gone, and the mayor re¬ 
sumed his business. The drunken man had been unable 
to round up a single follower! But threats like this were 
always in the air. Every few days the rumor of revolution 
would come mysteriously on the wind. We would begin 
looking for excitement. It was interesting to see how 
hostile the opposition parties were in Mexico, hostile to the 
point of frequent violence. Around Linares the president, 
Cardenas, was a favorite, and here the politician Calles was 
openly spoken of as a grafter who had put Cardenas in 
office thinking that he could maintain himself as a power 
behind the throne. 

In Monterey we asked some Americans who knew the 
country well, “How is it that tourists are safe in the midst 
of all this confusion?” 

“Well,” said they, “the authorities are very strict about 
highway robbers. They want American tourists to come 
into the country. They want American trade. So, although 
capital punishment is forbidden in Mexico, highway robbers 
are quickly apprehended, and in several cases have been 
shot for the offense. They were not shot officially, but 
were taken out to re-enact the crime and then shot while 
supposedly trying to escape!” Whatever the truth be in 

195 


these statements, there seemed to be a tacit understanding 
among all factions in Mexico to let foreigners pass un¬ 
molested. 

As far as our personal experience went, ex-bandits, as 
well as other natives of Mexico, always had a friendly 
greeting and a smile for us when we passed them. It was 
buenos dias, senor and senora wherever we went, and as 
far as we could tell travel was very safe in Mexico. 


196 


MEXICAN PORTRAIT 


C UCOO was Nils’ first Mexican model. He would 
sit as still as a mouse, with a hoe or the big machete 
clutched loosely in his brown hands. So still would 
he sit, that sometimes his eyelids would flutter closed, and 
for a moment he would nod. He was immensely pleased 
with the portrait of himself, and would point it out with 
sly chuckles whenever a visitor came onto the porch. 

In the afternoon, the doctor would drop in to see how 
things were going, and we would put the coffee on to boil, 
and open a can of American sardines, kippered herrings, 
baked beans or spaghetti, all of which the doctor enjoyed, 
as he had not been back to the states for some time, and, 
like all good Americans, he was fond of American foods. 

One day he brought a friend with him. This man was 
a tall, thick-set Mexican fellow who was a regular walking 
arsenal. His cartridge belt was heavy with ammunition, 
and at his hips hung two big six shooters. The face of 
the fellow was amiable enough, but a pair of sweeping 
mustachios gave him a fierce and dashing appearance. 

“This fellow is a real bandit,” said the doctor by way of 
introduction. “He’s got a place out in the hills. He is a 
fine fellow, when you get to know him, but there are many 

197 


hair-raising and thrilling stories current about his life be¬ 
yond the law.” 

Well, the fellow sat down, in a friendly manner, for 
coffee and sardines, and we carried on quite a lively con¬ 
versation through the doctor as interpreter. The gist of 
it was that manana, tomorrow, if the roads were less muddy, 
we must be the bandit’s guests. He would call for us with 
his team of horses, and take us to his home. Today, he 
had come to town on horseback. The rains had made the 
roads impassable for wagons. 

The fellow did not come back manana, nor the next day. 

“Tomorrow may mean the day after tomorrow, or next 
week, in this country,” said the doctor. 

In this case it meant next week. For next week, along 
came the bandit again, on horseback. 

“Tomorrow,” he said, “maybe the roads will be better, 
and if so, I will come and take you to my house where you 
can taste real Mexican home cooking.” 

Maybe, if we had stayed in Mexico long enough, manana 
would have come, but as it was we had to leave the country 
without tasting Mexican home cooking. This, by the way, 
was the closest encounter we had with bandits during our 
whole trip. 

Soon after the bandit’s visit, the doctor brought another 
friend to see us, a pretty senorita of the upper class who was 
Spanish in appearance. She was dressed in modern American 
style clothes, as the town Mexicans are. 

“This young lady has a national costume of Mexico which 
she will be glad to show you,” said the doctor. “If you 
wish, she will wear it, and pose for you, tomorrow.” 

And sure enough, “tomorrow” she came, all decked out 

198 


in full-skirted, colorful, embroidered costume with a fine 
needlework headdress. The headdress was shaped much 
like the war bonnet of an American Indian chief. We 
asked Charles the history of it. Interpreting for the young 
senorita he said, “The story goes that during Spanish colonial 
days, a boat was wrecked off the coast of Mexico. Among 
other things salvaged was a baby’s dress, the material of 
linen and lace. A Mexican woman put the dress over her 
head and used it as a bonnet, and ever after that, a similar 
arrangement, of course without sleeves, has been used in 
certain parts of Mexico as the headdress of a national 
costume.” 

From costumes, the conversation led to tropical plants, 
and the following morning the young senorita invited us 
to her home to see some potted palms and ferns. 

Passing through Linares, one would not suspect that 
several fine houses are hidden behind the high adobe or 
rock walls that line the streets in some sections. There is, 
in no case, a pretense of entrance, merely large archways 
with massive wooden doors shutting out the view of the 
interior from curious eyes. The entrance to the young 
senorita’s house led directly into a charming patio. We were 
really surprised to see the tropical beauty of the place, hang¬ 
ing ferns, brilliant colored flowers and scarlet leaves. The 
patio was shaded with large magnolia trees, and in the 
center was a rock garden and pool. Facing the garden 
was the low built adobe house with a wide porch, and on 
the porch was a set of comfortable furniture, and two cages 
of yellow canaries. 

The social customs of the new political regime in Mexico 
have not yet penetrated these houses of Linares. The girls 


199 


living in them are as rigidly chaperoned as any sehorita 
in old Spanish colonial days. At first someone accompanied 
the sehorita when she came to the doctor’s hacienda to pose. 
Later, when she knew us better, she would stay alone with 
Nils and myself. One day, during the portrait sitting, I left 
the porch for a matter of five minutes to take Charles to 
town, and when out of ear shot, Charles turned to me and 
said, “I do not think we should be doing this. Don’t tell 
anyone. If the gossips found out that our friend was alone 
with Nils, even for five minutes, how their tongues would 
wag!” 

As in America, so too in Mexico, an artist is always more 
or less bothered by an audience. At the doctor’s hacienda, 
Cucoo was invariably an interested spectator, and he had 
to show his portrait to each newcomer. But the audience 
was not always as sane as Cucoo. When the rains let up 
and Nils was at work on a painting of an ox cart and 
driver, the country Mexican fellows and the children would 
crowd around the easel, all gaping as though they could not 
see enough. For the most part they were polite and atten¬ 
tive, and seemed to take a sincere interest in the outcome 
of the picture. There was always a willing hand to help 
move the oxen to a better position, and a voice to admonish 
children that came too near. However, there were some 
very strange onlookers. On one occasion, during the paint¬ 
ing of the ox cart, an old woman came down the road, 
chattering in a loud, mannish voice, and swinging a dead 
rat aloft in circles over her head. Her clothes were hung 
upon her in outlandish manner; an old torn black skirt 
and waist draped her fat, slovenly figure, and her hair was 
bound with a bit of dirty black cloth. The front opening 


200 


of her dress was covered with a display of rusty safety pins. 
She looked like an old witch, and her actions were in keep¬ 
ing with her appearance. Approaching the house of a 
friend she flung the rat off into space and let out an un¬ 
earthly yell. Then, disappearing inside the hut, she stayed 
for a time, letting forth peal after peal of fiendish laughter. 
Presently she came over to watch the painting. 

She squatted on the ground, pointed from the picture 
of the oxen to the oxen themselves, and then went off into 
gales of laughter, controlling herself only long enough to 
poke Nils in the ribs. Our friend, Charles, was with us as 
interpreter. He told the woman to pass on. She replied, 
“Why should I? Iam not going to steal!” 

So saying, she slyly snatched a tube of paint, hid it for 
a moment in the folds of her dress, and then returned it to 
Nils. “Look! How honest I am!” she said. 

Tiring of watching the painting, she put on an act of 
her own. Shuffling around and gesturing wildly, and laugh¬ 
ing, she repeated a meaningless gibberish, “Hummey, 
shummey, ummey.” 

“She says that she is speaking like the Americans,” in¬ 
terpreted Charles. “She’s a harmless idiot. She lives up in 
the country with her husband and child who are apparently 
normal.” 

Presently she plodded away, muttering to herself, pur¬ 
sued by a crowd of small boys with slingshots. 

That night, Charles told us about some Mexicans who 
lived up the river, not far from the hacienda. “These 
people are a fine type of Mexican peon,” he said. “Of course 
I do not know whether they will pose, or not. For a half 
a peso, I believe they would be willing to sit.” 


201 


Bright and early the next morning we walked up the burro 
path on the banks of the river, and soon came to a group of 
thatched cottages. More meagre dwellings, one could hardly 
imagine. They were typical homes of the country Mexican 
peon, in the state of Nuevo Leon. They were made of bam¬ 
boo, interlaced with cane and marsh grass. The interiors 
contained few necessities of life, no chairs, no tables. The 
floors were of dirt. In front of the cottages was a crowd 
of raggedy women and children, sitting happily on the 
ground eating berries which fell from a tree overhead. In 
among the people scrambled thin puppies and kittens, and 
on the edge grazed an old cow, and a fat, satisfied looking 
burro. The whole assembly, people and animals, viewed 
us curiously. 

Charles spoke to them in their native tongue. He ad¬ 
dressed the old woman, asking if she would pose for a 
painting. In response she became visibly nervous, and wrung 
her hands. 

“She says,” interpreted Charles, “that her husband will 
not be home till dark and she could not possibly say yes, 
or no, for herself.” 

We went on to the next cottage where a mother stood 
with two little girls clinging to her skirts. She replied to 
Charles’ request, “My husband, he is away in the fields. I 
cannot say for myself.” 

Charles explained, “It’s no use now. We will have to wait 
until the husbands return. I have had much experience 
with these peon women. They can’t decide a thing for 
themselves. One time I had need of a witness for a property 
deed. I asked the old woman there to sign, but would she ? 
No. Her husband is her lord and master.” 


202 


As we turned to leave, the old woman beckoned to Charles 
to come back to her cottage. She had placed several ears 
of corn to roast on an open fire. With true Mexican hos¬ 
pitality, as poor as she was, she gave us each an ear of corn 
to eat, and very sweet corn it was. 

When at last we set off down the road, we were fol¬ 
lowed by a man who had just come back from the fields. 
On his sturdy little burro, he soon caught up with us. He 
said, in English, “The old woman, she is much fright. She 
not understand what is to paint?” 

We asked him to explain to her our proposition, and to 
offer her a peso for posing. After some hesitation, the man 
agreed, if we would promise one thing. 

“What is that?” we asked. 

“Do not make picture while she pick louse from child!” 
We began to think that the story of the louse had become 
a classic in Mexico. 

In the afternoon of that same day we were visited by 
the old woman, accompanied by her husband. The old 
woman clutched her rusty black shawl tightly about her 
head. Nervously she waited for something to happen, and 
she was quite taken aback when the afternoon passed with 
so little effort on her part. At the end of the pose, the 
husband accepted the peso on her behalf. 

The news that the American artist wanted models trav¬ 
elled fast. Bright and early the next morning a whole 
group of peons came in procession down the path. Cucoo 
tried to shoo them away, as if they were so many chickens, 
but they came on just the same. Later, through an inter¬ 
preter Cucoo explained that the peons had all insisted that 
they were hired for models! 


203 


Well, there they were, anyway, a man and a woman and 
five or six raggedy children, and a few other relatives. They 
all thrust out their hands, saying “Peso! Peso!” 

Nils chose the man, an evil looking type, and shooed the 
rest away. Whereupon the woman became infuriated. She 
pointed to each child in turn, and made insinuating offers of 
her own person. I suppose that she had counted on a peso 
for herself and for each of the children she had brought 
with her. In the end, she changed her tune from “Peso, 
Peso,” to “Centavos! Centavos!” But when she had no 
luck at all, she finally sat down to watch the painting of her 
husband’s portrait, while her brood scrambled about on the 
porch. Cucoo kept a weather eye on the whole lot, and 
presently, when Charles appeared, we found out that there 
was reason to be careful. 

“Why! Where did the Cuerno come from?” 

“Cuerno? What’s that?” we asked. 

“Cuerno. ‘The horns,’ are what these people are called. 
They are a notorious family of beggars. The worst petty 
thieves in Linares. The man you are painting is the best of 
the lot. He is one of Villa’s ex-bandits!” 

When the doctor heard about the wages offered for pos¬ 
ing, he said, “These Mexicans are paid at the rate of fifty 
centavos a day. Now they will refuse to work when they 
find that they can get a peso for sitting still two hours!” 

And Charles added, “Anyway, Cuerno now has a peso 
to bet on the cockfight next Sunday.” 


204 


COCKFIGHT 


S UNDAY came in Catholic Mexico. Early in the morn¬ 
ing the church bells tolled, and before we were up 
we saw the peon women solemnly passing by, all 
shrouded in their dull black shawls, and even Cucoo, who 
was rather lax about going to Mass, was up and away to 
church dressed in his one change of shirt, and the same 
old blue jeans and sandals, and immense straw sombrero. 
Although, at the time, the government was using stringent 
measures to break the power of the priesthood, the religious 
question had not reached such a crisis in Nuevo Leon as 
it had in some of the southern states. But at that very 
moment there was a placard on the bulletin board of the 
town hall at Linares, depicting a padre as a black, hairy, 
tarantula-like monster, sucking the life from the people. 
None dared to tear down the threatening poster, but the 
church bells tolled steadily on, calling the faithful, and the 
peons went regularly to service. 

Sunday is a great day in Mexico, and not only is it a 
day of religion, but also of drama and sport. When the 
peons came trooping home again from worship, their talk 
was all about a coming cockfight. 

“Is this some special fight?” we asked Charles. 

“Oh, no,” he replied. “It is a regular, Sunday afternoon 


205 


diversion. If you wish to see it, I can get a fellow to take 
you.” 

That very afternoon, while American sports fans back 
in the States were hurrying off to the baseball fields, we set 
forth to see one of the popular sports of Mexico. The cock 
pit was situated behind a building on a side street. At the 
entrance we were met by Charles’ friend, an olive-skinned 
fellow who counted his descent from Spanish and Moorish 
lineage. The gate man took twenty centavos entrance fee 
from each of us, and we went immediately to join the crowd 
of spectators who were already gathered, a circle of Mexi¬ 
cans dressed in faded blue jeans, white denim trousers, and 
khaki working clothes. All of the audience was of the 
peon class, and, moreover, there was not a skirt to be seen. 
The men were crowded three deep around the pit, and al¬ 
though they seemed a bit surprised to see a woman, they 
immediately made room on the front row of benches. So, 
we were seated practically in the pit with only a muslin 
fence about two feet high between us and the cocks. The 
enclosure was some fifteen feet in diameter, and sheltered 
by a thatched roof. The floor was of dirt, and in the dust 
squatted a group of peons, each with a bird sitting quietly 
on his lap, or held, like a leashed dog, by a string which 
was attached to the man’s belt or ankle. The mass of on¬ 
lookers was behind the circular fence. They leaned eagerly 
forward, their dark, Indian faces shining with expectancy. 

“The fight will begin as soon as the cocks are paired 
off,” said the Spanish fellow. “They have got to be matched, 
according to weight, as you match your prize fighters in 
your country.” 

The entries were mostly long legged, agile, game cocks 

20 6 


with iridescent shining plumage, and long sweeping tails. 
But one contestant was a heavy barnyard fowl, a Barred 
Rock. 

“That yellow one, over there,” said our friend, pointing 
out a dainty bird with dull yellow plumage, “is owned by 
the priest at Linares. He raises gamecocks for a hobby, 
and it is said that he imports his breeding stock from 
Kentucky.” 

From the very beginning the cocks took an interest in 
their surroundings, and, if they got a chance, they made 
side passes with their beaks at each other. After some 
controversy, the entries were taken out of the pit and 
weighed; then the ring was cleared of all but two roosters, 
one, an agile game cock; the other, the heavy Barred Rock. 
With a show of ceremony the owners bound a razor-like 
blade tightly to the left leg of each bird. The blades were 
attached so as to take the place of the natural spurs. Dur¬ 
ing the preliminaries the knives were sheathed in heavy 
leather scabbards. 

“This is a one-sided affair,” explained our friend when 
he saw that a gamecock had been selected to oppose the 
Barred Rock. “The grey one is heavy and slow, and the men 
are laying money against him, thirty to one. If you want 
to do a little gambling, wait till the priest’s bird comes on.” 

While the bets were being arranged, the cocks were set 
down to walk and get used to their new spurs. They ambled 
about in a lame fashion, got petted and slapped by their 
owners, and were at last picked up and held face to face. 
Each was allowed to take a free nip at his opponent to 
get his dander up. Then, with a swooping motion, the 
scabbards were removed from the artificial spurs, and the 


207 


birds were placed on the ground, opposite each other. 
They needed no further introduction. The ruffles on their 
necks bristled. They flew at each other like two alley 
cats, plucking out mouthfuls of feathers, and sparring for 
position. The crowd was quiet and business-like, did little 
cheering, but made frequent, intense comment. It is said 
that the language of the cockpit is choice, and not fit for 
a lady’s ear, but as the conversation was in Spanish, we 
could not judge. 

Both birds were very angry, and ready to tear each other 
to bits; but our friend’s opinion was correct. It was obvious 
from the first which the winner would be. The Barred 
Rock was strong but slow. Almost before the thing was 
started, the gamecock, who was by far the more agile, and 
the cleverest, plunged his vicious steel spur into a vital 
spot in the barnyard fowl, and the latter wilted like a pricked 
balloon, flopped down on the ground and expired. 

On first sight and thought, the performance seemed pretty 
bloody and messy and cruel, all around; but the birds did 
not seem to find it so. They worked themselves up into 
such a frenzy that they did not seem to feel pain. The amaz¬ 
ing thing about them was that they would not quit for a 
wound, would not quit even when mortally hurt. It seemed 
that they would take another peck at their opponent as their 
last earthly act. 

The second fight was not so easily decided as the first. 
It was a contest between two real gamecocks. The priest’s 
bird was matched against a rooster with purple iridescent 
plumage and a fine sweeping tail. As the birds were set 
down in the pit, the Mexicans excitedly placed their money. 
Betting was heavy and no odds were given. The gambling 

208 


was contagious. Our friend nudged us and said, “I am an 
expert in picking winners. If you feel like trusting my 
opinion, now is the time to bet. The priest’s bird shows 
more agility than the purple one. If you’ll give me a peso, 
I will place a wager on him for you.” 

Left to our own devices, we would have backed the purple 
bird, but under the circumstances we felt we should take 
our friend’s advice. He had no trouble in getting our peso 
covered. 

When the fight started, it was at once apparent that both 
entries were fine creatures, full of spirit, quick moving on 
their wiry, yellow legs. They were even more anxious than 
the first pair to get down to the business of slaughter. They 
sparred for an opening, then flew at each other like balls of 
fury, feathers ruffled, beaks pecking, spurs jabbing, and it 
seemed left to chance which would plant his deadly knife 
first into a vital spot. After perhaps a minute, both suc¬ 
ceeded in inflicting a bad wound on the other. The priest’s 
bird lay down, bleeding heavily from his side. The purple 
opponent stood up, staggered, swayed back and forth, pour¬ 
ing a steady stream of blood from his chest and mouth, 
making bright little pools in the dust. But, it seemed, all 
was not over. These birds were by no means ready to quit. 
The owners stepped in, picked them up, patted them, blew 
on the backs of their necks, and set them at each other again. 
This time the yellow one bowled over the purple, and then 
dejectedly sat down, still looking daggers. The air was fairly 
bristling, and the ground was strewn with feathers. Now 
it looked as though the priest’s bird was victor, because 
the purple one could not rise again. 

“But no,” said our friend. “He is not technically the 


209 


winner until he proves that he is not sorry for what he has 
done!” 

Both birds were again taken in hand by their masters, 
and since the priest’s entry still had the spirit to inflict a 
peck upon the head of his opponent, he was unconditionally 
declared victor. Bets were paid, congratulations passed, and 
we were richer by one peso, but of course the two most 
interested parties were by this time dead, and, I suppose, 
destined to become the owners’ Monday dinner. 


210 


BULLFIGHT 


C ockfighting was the most popular sport at 

Linares, but at other places the bullfights drew a 
large crowd. Gay posters in the shop windows 
announced that six brave bulls would be killed on Sunday 
afternoon at Guadalupe, a small village outside of Mon¬ 
terey. The rains had so far intervened, but when Sunday 
came again in Mexico, the weather was bright and clear, 
and we set forth to see the contest between man and beast. 

The fight did not begin till four forty-five in the after¬ 
noon, after the hot sun of Mexico was well on down toward 
the horizon. We arrived early at the arena, and, not wanting 
to miss the details of the sport, we bought front row seats. 
We settled ourselves immediately to watch the crowd 
gather. At first we were the only spectators, and we had 
ample opportunity to study the ring. It was a circular en¬ 
closure about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter. The 
fence bordering the ring was about five feet in height and 
formed, with the front of the grandstand a narrow lane 
of protection. In front of the fence, at equal intervals, were 
four barriers, making passages wide enough to admit the 
body of a man but not that of a bull. Now, in that whole 
arena, there was only one person besides ourselves, a man 
who was busy sharpening with a file the barbs of the bander- 


211 


Mas, those tortuous looking instruments that are first thrust 
into the bull to stir him up into a towering rage. When the 
man finished a barb, he would thrust it unceremoniously 
into the ringside fence, there to let it quiver and flutter with 
the multi-colored papers that decorated its blunt end. This 
preparation of instruments lent a serious note to the calm 
afternoon. 

At length the crowd began to arrive, noisily, for Mexi¬ 
cans take their sports wholeheartedly, with loud enthusiasm. 
We saw now that the grandstand was divided into two 
parts, the division determined by the sunrays. The half 
where we had our seats, was in the shade, while the oppo¬ 
site side was still bathed in hot sunlight. On the sunny 
side sat the mob. Altogether, they were in the best of humor. 
After getting hold of one of their companion’s hats and 
sending it again and again into the air until it was no 
longer recognizable as a hat, they turned their attention 
to the ricos, those who sat on the sombra side. Every time 
that a woman arrived they would yell, “Que bonitol Que 
bonito!” and clap loudly. The men in the mob were 
polite, cheering those fat and forty almost as much as 
charming young girls. But if a particularly pretty damsel 
chanced to lift her skirts a trifle while walking up the 
stairs, they would shout something besides bonito, and 
would become more expressive and enthusiastic in their 
remarks. 

As at outdoor entertainments in the United States, there 
were pop and peanut vendors. A dark Mexican came past 
with a pail of ice cold drinks. “How about a bottle of pop, 
mister?” he said in regular Broadwayese. 

“You speak good English,” we said. 


212 


Naw. I no speak well. I forget how you say things. 
But I live ten year on 14th street, New York City.” 

It is odd how cordial a traveller feels when he meets a 
person who is familiar with his home town. We bought a 
couple of bottles of beer, and asked the Mexican vendor 
to have one on us, all because at one time he had lived on 
14th street, New York City. 

The audience was made up of men and women and chil¬ 
dren. Many American tourists had bought ringside seats, 
but after one look at the bull ring they retreated upward 
towards the highest tier of benches, and their vacated places 
were grabbed by the Mexican women and children. 

At last a band which had been playing in a desultory 
manner outside, marched in, and blew a loud blast on cor¬ 
nets, accompanied by a roll of drums. Thereupon, a re¬ 
splendent procession entered the arena. The costumes were 
nothing short of gorgeous. The two young matadors were 
dressed in gold braid suits, with tight-fitting breeches and 
stockings in pastel shades of lavender and green, and black 
tricornered hats, with round, black nobbins behind; the 
three banderilleros in fine, gold braid costumes, and an 
older man, an ex-matador, was dressed in dark maroon. 
The latter was in charge of the young fighters. Behind him 
walked two immensely bony horses, bearing the fat weight 
of two pot-bellied picadores. Bringing up the rear was 
a team of mules with the gear all set for dragging off the 
dead. 

Almost immediately the show was on. The picadores re¬ 
tired. The bull came in with a rush and a roar, shaking 
a small, gaudily decorated steel dart in his side. This dart 
had evidently been planted before he left the pen, to spur 


213 


him into quick anger. The bull was a small black fellow 
with a long tuft of hair hanging like a bell beneath his neck. 
He was of a type bred especially for the fight. The horns 
of the animal curved upward and outward and looked as 
though they were well able to do damage. He charged 
quickly at the banderilleros who stood waiting with purple 
cloaks outspread. These banderilleros led him through a 
pretty song and dance, first flirting with him with their 
cloaks, then side stepping and making him charge past. 
The bull did not in the least understand how he was being 
fooled. He would line up the bright cloth with his eye, 
shut down his eyelids and charge blindly for the cape. The 
banderilleros would stand poised until the animal was dan¬ 
gerously close, then they would step aside in the very nick 
of time with infinite grace that brought the grandstand down 
with cheers, and left the bull nonplused, chagrined, tossing 
his horns angrily. 

Then followed the three main parts of the fight, the 
sparring of the picadores, the placing of the banderillas, and 
the death stroke. 

The entrance of the picadores was both ludicrous and 
pathetic. The horses were so frail and bony that they 
would not move until a man ran up behind them and lashed 
them with a whip. Thus, with a man hitting their bony 
rumps, slowly the horses trod in and paraded around the 
arena with their fat masters atop. The side of the animal 
exposed to the bull was covered with a rakish red bandage, 
so that the horse could not see the approach of his opponent. 
This red bandage gave an effect both garish and foolish. 
In no case could this particular bull be persuaded to take 
much interest in the picadores. The fat rider would sit 


214 



These banderilleros led him through a pretty 
song and dance, first flirting with him with 
their cloaks, then side stepping and making 
him charge past. 
















stolidly on his mount and hold out a long wooden lance 
with a short point of steel at the end. After considerable 
urging on the part of the assistants, the bull would look 
askance at the point of the lance, then prod the horse 
deeply on his padded stomach. After this the bull would 
turn again toward the men on foot, and the horse would 
walk sadly out of the arena to wait for the next bull to take 
a poke at his thin sides. Such was the sport of the pica- 
dores. 

The part of the banderilleros, on the other hand, was 
worthy of admiration. With purple cloaks they had taunted 
the bull. Now they came forward to place their barbed 
instruments. In turn each walked jauntily to the center 
of the arena, faced about, rose gracefully on his toes with 
arms extended upward at a forty-five degree angle, and 
banderillas extended downward toward the bull. Thus 
poised, the fellow waited an instant until his compatriots 
turned the animal toward him. When the bull, with low¬ 
ered head, charged straight for the banderillero, the fellow 
was quite defenseless. He no longer held a cape with which 
to trick his opponent. Everything depended upon skill. It 
took nerve to stand there and wait for the oncoming horns, 
wait until the creature was just in front of him, and then, 
with a graceful dancer’s step to twist his lithe body to one 
side, let the animal rush past, and in the act to plant the two 
gaudily decorated banderillas in the animal’s shoulder. This 
all took courage, and was pretty to watch; but as soon as the 
sharp barbs struck, the bull bellowed, and twisted around 
to free himself of the darts. He was not wild and ferocious, 
as he should have been, not fighting mad, as the gamecocks 
of last Sunday’s sport had been. With the banderillas flop- 


217 


ping on either side, he ran about, and charged rather lamely 
while the audience cheered. 

Then, like an old frightened cow, he ran away! With 
a lumbering bound he leaped the fence, and jumped into 
the narrow lane where many of the more enthusiastic spec¬ 
tators were standing. Needless to say they hopped like grass¬ 
hoppers onto the grandstand. But the fight was gone out of 
the animal. Ignominiously, he was prodded back into the 
arena to face his death. The matador now stood ready with 
a long-bladed, stiletto-like sword hidden under a flaming 
red cloak. He drew himself up gracefully, with bravado, 
fluttered the lurid red flag on his left arm in front of the 
bull’s nose, and poised the sharp sword for the death thrust. 
As the bull lunged forward, the matador side stepped and 
sunk the blade to its hilt. Red matter oozed from the wound 
just back of the shoulder. This thrust is supposed to be 
fatal. But the bull was apparently not mortally wounded. 
He staggered, turned, made as if to escape, but the men 
warded him off from the fence. An assistant jumped in 
and removed the sword. The matador returned with a 
blunter sword, jabbed the bull on the top of its head. The 
animal waggled his head feebly at the red cloak, but re¬ 
fused to fall. Five times in all he was struck before his 
hind legs doubled under him, and he was dying. His breath 
came in short heaves. His tongue lolled out. Only then 
did an assistant step forward and finish the creature with 
a short dagger thrust, straight to the brain. At last the bull 
fell flat on his side and lay still. The matador bowed with 
bravado to the audience. They cheered and threw their 
hats into the ring. The matador smiled and courteously 
tossed back the hats to the owners. In came the team of 

218 


mules and in a jiffy the gear was attached to the dead bull’s 
horns, and he was dragged around the arena, and out again, 
bumping over the sand. So, it was over, and the killing of 
the other bulls was but a repetition of the first. 

Now, from all accounts, great matadors kill cleanly and 
with dispatch. The fellows we saw were novices, very 
young; “Ninos torreros,” they were named on the program, 
and their clumsiness, their lack of skill, coupled with the 
docile quality of the bulls, turned the spectacle into one of 
slaughter, rather than fight. It was a very gory afternoon, 
and while the Mexican audience was pleased with the enter¬ 
tainment, none of the Americans (ourselves included) really 
seemed to enjoy the sport. 

It is a well known fact that many Americans like to 
watch a good bloody prize fight, or bone-breaking wrestling 
match between two modern professional gladiators. But 
the general feeling among the tourists was that, at the bull¬ 
fight, the odds were too heavily in favor of man for real 
sportsmanship. In good American slang, the bull didn’t get 
a break. 

On leaving the arena our New York Mexican friend told 
us that the slaughtered bulls’ meat was sent to the markets 
in Mexico, and brought good prices. The next day, at 
Linares, we wondered if any of the fresh meat hanging in 
the market was part of one of the six brave bulls. 


219 


THE OPERA COMES TO TOWN 


F ROM our experiences at the bull ring and the cock¬ 
pit, one might be led to believe that all Mexicans 
are cold hearted. But, on the contrary, they have many 
humane traits. As a race they are strongly home loving 
and religious, and their religion means to them not only 
devotion, but also serious drama and entertainment. When 
we got home from the bullfight, there was our friend 
Cucoo, accompanied by his old grey goose, helping several 
Mexican women select flowers from the doctor’s garden. 
The flowers were to be used on the coming day of tribute 
to some patron saint. For everyone in Mexico has a patron 
saint, and innumerable days in each year are set aside for 
happy fiestas in their honor. 

The Mexicans also enjoy regular musical programs as 
much as barbaric sports, and religious fiestas. Once a week, 
at Linares, band concerts were held on the open plaza, and 
upon one nice rainy day the opera came to town. This was 
an occasion for great rejoicing on the part of the people. 
“Of course you are going to the opera,” was heard on every 
street corner. The Merry Widow was coming to town. And 
when the great night arrived, rich and poor alike turned 
out in their best clothes. 

The tumble-down high school auditorium had been tem- 


220 


porarily converted into an opera house. The approaching 
road was a river of mud, but this kept no one home. When 
the doors opened, the people elbowed their way in, and 
seated themselves expectantly in front of the tattered and 
torn drop curtain. In the very center of the curtain were 
two peepholes, through which, from time to time, peered a 
dark eye, more and more frequently as the hour advanced. 
Of course the opera did not start on time. I don’t believe 
that anything ever does start on time in Mexico. The room 
was hot and moist, and the air reeked of wet clothes and 
perfume. Presently the audience began to clap impatiently 
and cheer, but they soon settled back in their chairs to eat 
Mexican candy which was sold by young boys. A few 
centavos would buy a handful, all tied up in bright shining 
paper and cellophane ribbons. 

The orchestra was of local talent, directed by the com¬ 
pany’s impresario. When the footlights brightened visibly 
in front of the tattered curtain, the boys struck the first notes 
of the prelude to The Merry Widow. They played with 
great gusto, and really performed admirably. 

After a long wait the merry widow herself came out in 
front of the curtain. She was a plump and fiftyish woman 
with a reputation of an actress of some worth. Her figure, 
with the added years, had taken on a voluptuous rotund¬ 
ness, and her gay manner met with instant approval from 
the audience. That they knew and admired her was ap¬ 
parent from the roaring applause which greeted her, and 
grew to a pitch as she received a large bunch of white 
oleanders, and then bowed herself modestly from the stage. 
Whereupon, the curtain rose upon a scene set with Mont¬ 
gomery Ward furniture, and canvas columns that billowed 


221 


in front of painted backdrops that must have seen service 
when Maximilian came to Mexico. We expected to see 
beautiful chorus girls and handsome men in the supporting 
cast, but instead there was a strange contrast between the 
prima donna and the other actors and actresses. The part 
of the leading man was taken by a pink faced, sturdy young 
fellow of twenty odd years. It was whispered about that 
this was the prima donna’s latest husband. As for the rest 
of the cast, they were either very young or very old. The 
women were strange. There was one large blonde who 
had a nervous affliction of the eyes; a red head, with skinny 
legs; and a tall, dark-skinned peon girl. They were all 
dressed in gaudy and ill-fitting gowns, and their make-up 
was so heavy that their faces looked like those of painted 
wooden puppets. In fact their stiff jointed manners re¬ 
minded one of a Punch and Judy show. They sang with 
self-conscious enthusiasm, all but two old men who seemed 
embarrassed to open their mouths which lacked several 
front teeth. 

Against this dubious background, the merry widow car¬ 
ried off the show with great aplomb, even when a large 
piece of scenery descended from the flies and hovered dan¬ 
gerously over the heads of the actors. The audience ignored 
the accident, and thoroughly enjoyed the singing, and a 
good time was had by all. There was a nice feeling of rap¬ 
port between the spectators and the company. After the 
show was over, the merry widow came forth in a red eve¬ 
ning gown. Long white gloves and a jangling mass of pow¬ 
der compacts dangled from her wrists. She made a speech, 
telling of the time when she was a little girl in Linares. 

“Today, I may be fat,” she said coyly, “but I’ll pass!” 


222 


This remark brought the house down. There was loud ap¬ 
plause, and at last, after hearing a few more anecdotes 
and reminiscences, the audience dispersed, and went out into 
the rainy night. 

Later, we asked our friend Charles why there was so much 
contrast between the talent and looks of the merry widow 
and her cast. 

“Ah—but you see,” he replied, “the widow is wise, very 
wise indeed. If she had chosen a young and attractive group 
to support her, she would have lost some of her own splen¬ 
dor, in comparison. She is merely following a common 
strategy among stock shows in Mexico.” 


223 


HOMEWARD BOUND 


I NHERE came a day, all too soon, when we had to 
turn our backs on Linares and start the long trek 
* home to New York City. And although the Pan- 
American highway beckoned, luring us to go in the op¬ 
posite direction, down the road into the tropics beyond 
Victoria and onward over the high mountains to Mexico 
City, we were forced to realize that, not only was our car 
bond due, but our purse was rapidly thinning, and if we 
did not hurry away, we would spend the money we had 
set aside for buying pottery in Monterey. Accordingly, we 
started to pack. It was not an easy task. Our outfit had 
been unpacked for some time, and besides, we had several 
new possessions. There was Cucoo’s portrait, and a stack 
of other paintings, a collection of mountain ferns and res¬ 
urrection plants, sticks of bamboo and our market basket. 
No longer could everything be neatly stowed away inside 
the car. Things overflowed onto the running board, and 
our Ford began to take on the proportions of a pack 
burro. 

After we had gone the rounds to say good-bye to our 
friends, we returned to the hacienda and found Cucoo stand¬ 
ing by the car as if he were of two minds whether or not 
to pack up his one shirt and go with us. We gave him a 

224 


farewell peso, and when we drove off down the road he 
stood by the gateway, looking longingly after the de¬ 
parting auto. Soon, he was lost to view, and with the fading 
of his figure, we felt that we had left behind us real Mexico 
with its colorful markets, gay plazas, its cockfights, bull¬ 
fights, and happy-go-lucky ways of life. For although we 
were to spend one night in Monterey, it was only for the 
purpose of buying some of the fine crafts which we had 
admired on our arrival. What remained of our visit to 
Mexico was little more than a flash of scenery, mountains 
and clouds, semi-arid land with yucca palms, and maguey 
plantations, burros, ox carts, thatched houses, and som- 
breroed men. 

In Monterey we went directly to a large wholesale and 
retail store which handled the best of the pottery and bas¬ 
ketry from the south, and there we stocked up with several 
tea sets, plates, tiles, and large flower bowls, and some glass¬ 
ware. We had selected the most breakable kind of things 
to carry on the long home trip, but the shopkeeper had our 
purchases stowed away in two huge cane baskets, such as 
are used all over Mexico in place of packing boxes. The 
baskets were all of two feet high and at least eighteen 
inches wide. Each piece of pottery and each glass was 
carefully wrapped in thick straw, and held in place by 
tightly interlaced string. With one basket tied onto either 
running board, we looked very much like an overloaded 
pack burro. 

In the city of Monterey we heard confused reports to 
the effect that the Rio Grande was overflowing and flooding 
the surrounding region. Newspapers had been held up for 
several days. Trains could not cross the river. Neither 

225 


could automobiles. The tourists in Monterey were chat¬ 
ting together about the roads, and speculating upon the con¬ 
dition of Texan highways. Then they talked, tourist fashion, 
about the good free drinks in Monterey. One boy had 
drunk all he could hold, then spent his last cent, all of 
twenty-five dollars, in buying quarts and quarts of mescal, 
but what he would now do with his supply, he alone knew. 
At that time each person could take back across the border 
with him, a quart of spirituous liquor or wine, duty free. 
No more. Every quart above the quota was heavily taxed. 
There was a flat two dollar per gallon internal revenue tax 
on all alcoholic drinks. An additional duty of five dollars 
per gallon on spirituous liquors, six dollars per gallon on 
sparkling wines, and one dollar and a quarter per gallon 
on still wines. 

On our second day in Monterey, it was rumored that the 
bridge over the Rio Grande was again open for traffic, and 
with a group of waiting tourists, we left the city, heading 
for the States. On the outskirts we met a bunch of jolly 
Mexicans thumbing their way north. They chased along 
beside us, trying to hop onto the running board where the 
baskets of pottery were already taking up most of the 
standing room. A bit further on, we met a long burro pack 
train, going south into the city. Like all tourists we felt 
that our trip to Mexico was not complete without at least 
one picture of Mexican burros. So we stopped our car, 
pulled out our camera, and hailed the driver who good na- 
turedly halted his slow-moving outfit. 

“Will you let me make a picture of your burros?” I asked. 
Surprisingly, he understood English, and we did not have 
to get out our dictionary. 


226 


“Ah, senora,” he replied. “But I am a poor man. How 
can I pay to have picture take of my burros?” 

We held up a peso and explained, “We want to pay you, 
sehor.” 

He seemed very much astonished. “But who should want 
to pay a peso for picture of a burro?” he said. 

In the end we both were happy, for we had our photo¬ 
graph, and the Mexican went into Monterey with an extra 
silver peso in his pocket. 

At Nuevo Laredo we found that the Rio Grande had 
calmed down and was now within bounds. On the far side 
we could see old U.S.A., but there were the customs be¬ 
tween us and American soil, and it took some time to pass 
through the border gates. The Mexicans looked into every 
nook and cranny of our car, and it took all of our powers 
of persuasion to keep them out of the baskets of pottery. 
We knew that if the porters ever got the tea sets and glass¬ 
ware unwrapped, they would never pack the things solidly 
again. 

After all the talk we had heard about censorship of paint¬ 
ings and photographs, no one so much as glanced at our 
collection. Someone later explained to us that the rule had 
been changed. The Mexicans had found that the law caused 
more comment and publicity on sordidness than a few un¬ 
censored paintings ever could. 

On the American side of the bridge, a doctor gave us a 
brief once-over, and asked if we had been vaccinated. We 
had with us our quota of cigarettes, three hundred cigarettes 
per person, and each package had to be stamped. While this 
was being done, the plant inspector took away from us our 
collection of mountain ferns and resurrection plants, and 


227 


poles of bamboo. The plant quarantine was absolute. In 
order to bring in any Mexican fruits, flowers, seeds, or seed¬ 
lings, a tourist has to obtain permission from the depart¬ 
ment of agriculture. 

When at last everything was okayed, an American porter 
stepped up to us, and said, “You don’t happen to have any 
Mexican coins about you, do you? Perhaps you won’t be 
needin’ them no more.” 

We gave the fellow our remaining centavos, and without 
further delay, drove back into the States. 

Again, we felt the sudden change from one type of nation 
to another. The gas stations announced “Hot shot tire mend¬ 
ing. Quick service,” and meant it. Three attendants jumped 
to clean our windshield, check our oil and put water in our 
radiator. In the store windows were frigidaires, mowing 
machines, washing machines. When we went into a drug 
store to get a chocolate ice cream soda, it was on the tip 
of our tongues to ask “Cuanto?” But everywhere around 
us we heard the good old Texan drawl, and we remem¬ 
bered that we no longer had to struggle with Spanish 
phrases. 

Once back in the States, our main concern was to get 
home before we were completely broke. However, we took 
the long way around, because there seemed to be more space 
for camping on the beach routes, and also because it is 
more enjoyable to camp by the ocean where one can get a 
bath in salt water every day. So, we started back on the 
coastal route, retracing our path across Texas, and spending 
a night at Galveston. Thence we went inland again, across 
Louisiana, following national highway 90 all the way to 
Jacksonville, Florida. 


228 


Although infinitesimal gnats and biting flies pestered us 
in the pines of the southern states, in no case did we have the 
trouble in finding a place to pitch our tent that we had had 
on our downward trip. The good highway 90 led across 
the southern border of the state of Mississippi, close to the 
Gulf which was here lined with fine, sugary sand beaches. 
In northern Florida there is an immense amount of land 
open for camping. Eighteen miles out of the city of Pensa¬ 
cola, on the Gulf, is the place known as Gulf Beach. It is 
a long bathing beach, faced by a five-width paved boulevard, 
but the place looks as though it had been hit by the plague. 
It is one of those ghostly towns which started to grow with 
speed and grandeur in the days of the Florida boom. There 
are nice cement sidewalks going off nonchalantly into a 
deep end of high grass. There is the skeleton of a large hotel 
that never grew beyond the framework. There are bath 
houses ripped and half torn away by some gulf storm, and 
an open air dance pavilion with one side fallen crazily in. 
But in all this beautiful setting there was not a single house 
or a single resident, and no life at all except for a lone hot 
dog stand that supplied the needs of the picnickers and bath¬ 
ers who came out from Pensacola. 

Shortly after dark, we were the only human beings left 
on the entire beach, and we were able to set up our cots be¬ 
neath the roof of the dance pavilion, and could have spent 
a night in peace and quiet if a big wind and rain storm had 
not come up and threatened to collapse the whole structure 
about our ears. So, just before dawn we were driven from 
the shelter, and from then on we were chased most of the 
way home by the rains. Of course they were not as heavy 
as the rains of Mexico, but they were heavy enough to make 


229 


us very wet by the time that we got across the pinelands and 
swamps of northern Florida. 

Turning directly north we followed the sea level route 
to New York, travelling across the state of Georgia, going 
through the quaint streets of Savannah, and spending a night 
near the very old town of Beaufort, South Carolina, a quiet 
resort which was originally settled by the French Hugue¬ 
nots. Five miles away was the fishing village of Port Royal, 
and there, in the rain, we inquired for a tourist camp. 

The answer was, “They don’t know what a tourist camp 
is down here. You can camp in the middle of the square, if 
you want to.” But in the end, the kind hearted storekeeper 
let us stay under the shelter of his garage, which had just 
previously been occupied by the family cow whose odors 
were kept freely circulating by the moisture, but we were 
most thankful for the shelter. 

We went through Charleston, South Carolina, in the rain, 
and presently we came to a place where water was four or 
five feet deep over the roads, and even the rabbits of the 
woods had, of necessity, taken to swimming. While waiting 
for the floods to go down, and for the emergency crews to 
repair the bridges, we stopped for a night on a bit of high 
ground. 

It was not until we reached Chesapeake Bay that the rains 
let up, and with the sun out once more, we enjoyed the 
twenty-six-mile ferry crossing, a pleasant hour and three 
quarters ride to Cape Charles, Virginia, where we camped 
and got our supper by digging clams. 

All along the way our baskets of pottery caused much 
comment and speculation. A great number of people asked 
us whether we had fish or clams to sell, and one patent 

230 


medicine salesman took it for granted that we were selling 
baskets. He was camped outside a small southern town, with 
his wife and child, and all they had for a home was an 
old touring car and a lean-to tent. He volunteered informa¬ 
tion. 

“If you are trying to sell baskets in this town, you won’t 
have no luck. A basket peddler just got through canvassin’ 
every house, and the people are as stingy as all get out. I 
bin here three days now, and ain’t sellin’ a thing worth 
mentionin’. Take my advice, and pull out of town. That’s 
what I’m doin’, first the pavement cools off, so’s I won’t 
blow out my old tires.” 

But at least one person figured that we had something of 
value in our baskets. When we left the car parked for a 
short time, we came back to find the strings partly untied 
on both sides and the baskets almost pulled off the running 
boards. But the would-be thief was gone, and we did not 
catch sight of even his heels. 

After leaving Cape Charles we pushed rapidly over the 
intervening miles, for we were now out of the real camping 
country. When at last we got back in New York and took 
stock of ourselves and our outfit, our speedometer told us 
that we had travelled well over 6,500 miles. With somewhat 
less than $300.00 we had covered this mileage, in consider¬ 
able comfort at that, without stinting when we felt like 
having a meal in an inexpensive restaurant. We started out 
with $300.00, came home with $20.00 in our pockets. If the 
cost of the curios be subtracted from the original amount, 
this brings the total expenses of the trip to $255.00. 

We found that with all the mosquitoes, gnats, rains, floods, 
winds, and heat, we were not visibly changed except for a 


231 


deep coat of sun tan on our bodies. Our clothes, on the other 
hand, were ready for the ragpicker, and the Ford had cer¬ 
tainly undergone a great change. Although the engine was 
still going strong, the paint was nearly gone off the body, 
and the salt air at the beaches had rusted all the metal parts, 
and, loaded as it was with baskets and camp kit, it looked 
more like a junk man’s truck than a tourist’s pleasure car. 

We unpacked the baskets with some apprehension. They 
had been rained on for several days, they had been bumped 
over hundreds of miles, and we wondered if we had any¬ 
thing left of our purchases except a load of pot shards. But 
cups, plates, and bowls came out of the straw, undamaged, 
and when we got them all unpacked, there was not a single 
piece chipped in the whole lot, which speaks well for Mexi¬ 
can packers of Monterey. 

We were now able to serve tea and tortillas on Mexican 
pottery, while we planned how to get again south to Padre, 
or beyond. 


232 




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LOUISIAN 


AA/DS 


mis How* 












































































































































































































































































































































































































